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GORDON    #    CHRIST    OF    TO-DAY 


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BY 


GEORGE  A.  GORDON 

MINISTER    OF    THE    OLD    SOUTH    CHURCH,    BOSTON 


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THE  CHRIST  OF  TO-DAY 


BY 


GEORGE  A.  GORDON 

MINISTER    OF    THE    OLD    SOUTH    CHURCH,    BOSTON 


\r 


BOSTON   AND   NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

<^\)t  jaitcr^iDc  pre??,  CambriDoe 
1896 


QJ^^ 


Copyright,  1895, 
By  GEORGE  A.  GORDON. 

Ail  rights  reserved. 


FIFTH   EDITION. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Coo 


TO  THE  STUDENTS  IN  OUR  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARIES, 

TO  THOSE  ENTERING  THE  CHRISTIAN  MINISTRY, 

AND    TO    THE    NEW    GENERATION    OF    CHRISTIAN    LAYMEN, 

WHOSE  UNSPEAKABLE  PRIVILEGE  IT  WILL  BE 

TO  RECOVER  BOTH   FOB  THE   REASON  AND   THE   HEART 

THE    OLD    AND    AL^HGHTY    FAITH    IN    THE    INFINITE    CHRIST, 

31  %nstxibe  tW  ^ooh, 

IN  PROFOUND  SYMPATHY  WITH  THEIR  HIGH  CALLING, 

IN    DEVOUT    GRATITUDE    TO    GOD    FOR   THEIR   CONSECRATION, 

IN  AFFECTIONATE  RESPECT, 

ANT)    IN    GREAT    AND    CONFIDENT 

EXPECTATION. 


PEEFACE. 


This  book  Lad  its  origin  in  two  lectures  deliv- 
ered before  the  Divinity  School  in  Yale  Univer- 
sity in  January,  1895 ;  and  in  an  essay  prepared 
for  the  Unitarian  Association  of  Boston,  and 
given  before  several  other  clerical  bodies  in  the 
same  city.  These  three  essays,  however,  consti- 
tute less  than  a  third  of  the  present  discussion, 
and  even  that  third  has  been  entirely  transformed 
through  revision  and  extension  of  plan.  The 
substance  of  the  second  chapter  was  read,  in  July 
last,  before  the  Summer  School  of  Theology  at 
Western  Reserve  University. 

The  work  has  grown  out  of  the  reflection  of 
the  author  upon  the  theological  phenomena  of 
the  time,  more  accessible  to  the  student  in  cur- 
rent thought  than  in  books.  The  author  is  glad 
to  acknowledge  the  great  impulse  in  the  direc- 
tion of  his  studies  derived  from  Principal  Fair- 
bairn's  treatise,  "The  Place  of  Christ  in  Modern 


VI  PBEFACE. 

Theology."  That  mme  of  learnmg,  masterly 
historical  generalization,  and  rich  suggestion  has 
given  new  strength  to  the  Christian  consciousness 
throughout  the  English-speaking  world;  and  the 
longer  it  is  read  the  more  generative  of  ideas  it 
will  be  found  to  be. 

Nevertheless,  there  are  questions  perplexing 
the  faith  of  our  churches  that  Dr.  Fairbairn's 
great  work  does  not  meet,  —  questions  of  which 
only  one  living  in  open  communion  in  the  heart 
of  our  American  Christianity  can  fully  know. 
Every  nation  must  work  out  its  own  theology. 
Great  Britain  and  Germany,  Reformation  and 
Patristic  times,  can  but  supply  impulse  and  guid- 
ance. Importations  without  naturalization  are 
alike  fatal  in  thought  as  in  life,  and  naturaliza- 
tion, to  be  thorough,  must  equal  re-creation.  A 
borrowed  theology  must  signify  that,  in  the  high- 
est sphere  of  human  thought,  the  national  mind 
is  either  incaj^able  or  indifferent;  and  neither  of 
these  terms  describes  the  condition  of  the  Ameri- 
can mind  to-day.  The  advice  of  Maurice  at 
this  point  is  full  of  meaning:  " New-Englanders 
who  try  to  substitute  Berkeley  or  Butler,  .  .  . 
or  Kant  or  Hegel,  for  Edwards,  and  to  form 
their  minds  upon  any  of  them,  must  be  forcing 


PREFACE.  vii 

themselves  Into  an  unnatural  position,  and  must 
suffer  from  the  effort.  On  the  contrary,  if  they 
accept  the  starting-point  of  their  native  teacher, 
and  seriously  consider  what  is  necessary  to  make 
that  teacher  consistent  with  himself,  —  w^hat  is 
necessary  that  the  divine  foundation  upon  which 
he  wished  to  build  may  not  be  too  weak  and  nar- 
row for  any  human  or  social  life  to  rest  upon  it, 
—  we  should  expect  great  and  fruitful  results 
from  their  inquiries  to  the  land  which  they  must 
care  for  most,  and  therefore  to  mankind."  The 
one  foundation  upon  which  Edwards  wished  to 
build  was  the  absoluteness  of  God;  and  he  has 
left  for  his  followers  the  principle  which,  if 
resolutely  employed,  will  insure  both  continuity 
and  progress  in  the  thought  and  life  of  Ameri- 
can Christianity.  The  second  chapter  of  the 
discussion  contained  in  this  volume  is  a  fresh 
attempt  to  reach  the  absoluteness  of  God  through 
the  finality  for  mankind  of  the  mind  of  Christ; 
the  third  chapter  employs  the  mind  of  Christ  as 
the  creative  and  conservative  principle  in  the- 
ology, and  in  other  intellectual  movements  of 
the  time;  the  fourth  chapter  sees  in  Christ  the 
supreme  instrument  of  the  Spirit  in  the  moral 
education  of  the  race.    A  Christological  interpre- 


viil  PREFACE. 

tation  becomes  a  theological  principle,  and  these 
issue  in  the  great  method  of  the  preacher.  How- 
ever insignificant,  the  present  discussion  is  a  true 
continuation  of  the  theological  tradition  which 
dates  from  our  greatest  theologian,  Jonathan 
Edwards.  His  errors,  his  weaknesses,  his  great 
inconsistencies,  and  what  Prof.  A.  V.  G.  Allen 
calls  "his  Inferno,"  have  had  altogether  too  long 
a  history  in  New  England  thought.  It  is  time 
that  his  original  principle  —  the  absoluteness  of 
God  —  were  allowed  logical  and  unreserved  ex- 
pression in  the  faith  of  our  churches.  For  fur- 
ther explanation  of  the  occasion  and  motive  of 
this  book  the  author  must  refer  the  reader  to  the 
introductory  chapiter. 

George  A.  Gordon. 

Old  South  Parsonage,  Boston. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  L 

INTRODUCTORY. 
I.  The  new  world  into  which  the  church  has 


Pagb 


COME 3 

II.  The  EXPANSION  of  this  world  in  space         .        .  6 

III.  Its  extension  in  time 11 

IV.  The  world  of  contemporaneous  humanity         .  19 
V.  The  kingdom  of  the  spirit,  and  the   kingdom 

of  the  spirit  of  CHRIST 22 

VI.  The  problem  before  the  christian    thinker 

TO-DAY           .........  28 

VII.  The  theologian  of  the  future     .        .        .        .31 

VIII.  The  motive  of  the  discussion  that  follows       .  34 

CHAPTER  II. 

CHRIST   IN"   THE    FAITH    OF   TO-DAY. 

— *  I.  Views  of  christ  from  without  and  within  46 

II.  The  ethical  christ 53 

III.  The  gains  manward  and  godward  in  current 

thought   of   CHRIST 66 

rV.   The   INTERPRETATION   OF   THE    FINAL    MEANING   OF 

NATURE   THROUGH   CHRIST 81 

V.  The  defect  in  current  thought  of  christ  an 

OVERDONE   principle   OF   IDENTITY        .           .           .  93 

VI-   The   PRINCIPLE   of   difference   in    the    GODHEAD  101 


X  CONTENTS. 

VII.  The  deity  of  christ  the  expression  of  this 

DIFFERENCE   IN   HUMANITY 112 

Vni.   The    MEANING    OF    THIS    DIFFERENCE,    THE    MORAL 

PERFECTION   OF   CHRIST 122 

CHAPTER   III. 

THE   SIGNIFICANCE   TO-DAY    OF   A   SUPREME 
CHRISTOLOGY. 

I.    In   RELATION   TO   THE    HIGHER   CRITICISM  .  .    149 

II.  In  reference  to  new  theological  theory       .  166 

III.  In  its  bearing  upon  the  social  problem  .        .  206 

IV.  As   A   FORCE   AGAINST   MATERIALISM  .  .  .    226 

V.  The  fortune  of  humanity  bound  up  with  the 

DEITY  OF   CHRIST 234 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   PLACE    OF   CHRIST   IN   THE    PULPIT    OF   TO-DAY. 

I.  The  value  of  the  prophetic  office  in   the 

LIGHT  OF  Christ's  career 256 

II.   The    RELATION    OF    the    preacher's    MESSAGE    TO 

THE   MULTITUDES   UNDER  MORAL  DEFEAT       .  .   275 

III.  Christ  and  Christianity  inseparable         .        .  283 

IV.  Christ  the  source  of  our  civilization      .        .  287 
V.  The  psychological  aspect  of  the  question      .  295 

VI.  Christ  the  suprejvie  person  in  time,  and  there- 
fore THE  mediator  OF  THE  SUPREME  PERSON 
BEYOND   TIME 304 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 


"  And  the  house,  when  it  was  in  building-,  was  built  of  stone 
made  ready  at  the  quarry  :  and  there  was  neither  hammer  nor 
axe  nor  any  tool  of  iron  heard  in  the  house,  while  it  was  in  build- 
ing." —  1  Kings  vi.  7. 

"  About  every  great  Christian  truth  there  is  a  debatable 
ground.  A  definition  is  to  be  given ;  the  bond  of  connection  be- 
tween the  truth  supposed  and  other  related  Christian  truths  is  to 
be  sought ;  a  place  is  to  be  found  for  it  in  the  general  sum  of  our 
knowledge.  All  this  work  of  accurate  conception  and  explana- 
tion constitutes  an  open  field  for  differences  to  arise  among  those 
who  concur  in  the  main  thing.  Two  maps  of  the  same  country 
will  seldom,  if  ever,  exactly  agree."  —  Dr.  George  P.  Fisher, 
Faith  and  Rationalism,  p.  42. 

' '  If  we  looked  on  the  conceptions  formed  by  us  of  God  as 
fully  coincident  with  reality,  if  we  imputed  to  Him  the  infirmi- 
ties inseparable  from  a  finite  mind,  and  regarded  our  operations 
of  thought  as  an  exact  representation  of  his,  we  might  be 
charged  with  an  offensive  anthropomorphism.  But  this  charge 
does  not  hold  against  the  assumption  that  He  is  a  Spirit."  — 
Dr.  George  P.  Fisher,  Faith  and  Rationalism,  p.  103. 

"Pity  is  love  and  something  more:  love  at  its  utmost."  — 
T.  T.  Hunger,  The  Freedom  of  Faith,  p.  182. 


THE  CHRIST  OF  TO-DAY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 


Revolutions  in  liuman  affairs  are  of  two 
kinds,  the  gradual  and  unconscious,  and  the  sud- 
den and  violent.  In  our  own  history  we  have 
had  two  examples  of  the  latter,  the  Civil  War  and 
that  which  resulted  in  the  independence  of  the 
United  States.  French  history  furnishes  many 
examples  of  this  type  of  revolution;  the  Protes- 
tant Reformation  in  Germany,  Switzerland,  and 
the  Netherlands,  and  the  ultimate  disaster  to  the 
Roman  Empire  must  be  put  in  the  same  class. 
So,  too,  must  one  think  of  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem  by  Titus,  and  of  many  of  the  great 
crises  through  which  Israel  passed,  back  to  the 
Exodus.  On  the  other  hand,  instances  of  grad- 
ual and  peaceful  changes  of  a  fundamental  na- 
ture are  likewise  numerous.  The  Reformation  in 
England,  the  revolution  that  followed  the  revival 
of  learning  in  mediaeval  Europe,  the  transforma- 


4  INTRODUCTOEY. 

tions  wrought  by  the  invention  of  printing,  the 
discoveries  of  navigators,  and  the  steady  progress 
of  science  have  been  largely  of  this  character. 
And  in  the  history  of  Israel,  so  full  of  violent 
changes,  there  are  not  wanting  illustrations  of 
movements  of  a  contrasted  order.  Before  the 
temple  of  Solomon  was  built,  a  new  and  mighty 
turn  had  come  in  the  fortunes  of  the  people  over 
whom  he  reigned.  The  wilderness  wanderings 
were  far  behind.  The  nomadic  days  of  the  early 
settlement  of  the  new  country  were  long  ago  out- 
grown. The  time  of  the  city  had  arrived,  with 
its  notes  of  fellowship,  order,  and  stability;  with 
its  concentration  of  population,  interests,  influ- 
ence, and  power.  The  outward  sign  of  this  na- 
tional change  was  the  building  of  the  temple. 
It  was  a  large  undertaking,  it  marked  a  revolu- 
tion in  the  life  of  the  j)eople,  it  was  costly  in  the 
extreme ;  and  yet  so  ripe  were  the  times  for  the 
magnificent  enterprise,  that  it  went  forward  to  its 
completion  as  if  by  magic.  The  sacrifice,  the 
labor,  the  skill,  the  new  ideas  and  adjustments 
necessary  for  it,  all  came  with  the  ease  of  perfect 
spontaneity.  Out  of  the  consciousness  of  the 
splendid  king  at  his  best,  representing  as  he  did 
the  consciousness  of  the  people,  came  the  great 
building  for  God,  which  marked  an  e230ch  in 
Israel's  history,  and  recorded  a  silent  but  mighty 
revolution  in  the  thought  and  feeling  of  the  na- 
tion.    This   is  the    profounder   meaning   of   the 


THE  NEW   WOBLD   OF  FAITH.  5 

beautiful  description:  "And  the  house,  when  it 
was  in  building,  was  built  of  stone  made  ready 
at  the  quarry:  and  there  was  neither  hammer 
nor  axe  nor  any  tool  of  iron  heard  in  the  house, 
while  it  was  in  building."  The  times  were  ripe, 
and  the  nation  moved  out  of  the  old  narrow,  out- 
grown world,  and  into  the  new  world  of  breadth 
and  hope,  with  the  magnificent  unconsciousness  of 
healthy  expanding  life. 

Through  this  ancient  parallel  one  may  see  what 
has  already  taken  place  in  the  Christian  church. 
A  revolution  has  already  been  accomplished  — 
for  the  most  part  peacefully,  beautifully  —  in  the 
fundamental  thoughts  of  intelligent  believers ;  the 
church  has  already  moved,  almost  unconsciously, 
but  still  trul}^,  out  of  the  old  narrow  world  into 
the  new  and  vast  world  of  our  modern  intelli- 
gence. All  reflective  disciples  of  Christ  have 
been  moving  into  a  new  realm  of  thought  and 
feeling,  and,  like  men  on  an  ocean  voyage,  they 
hardly  know  how  far  they  have  come.  The  same 
sun  and  moon  and  stars  and  sea  seem  to  make 
the  fact  of  progress  insignificant;  but  the  day 
arrives  when  a  new  territory  is  sighted,  and  the 
reality  of  advance  can  no  longer  be  doubted. 
The  abiding  facts  in  Christian  faith,  the  perma- 
nent forces  in  Christian  experience,  the  everlast- 
ing lights  in  the  firmament  of  Christian  truth, 
and  the  changeless  element  of  feeling  in  which 
all  genuine  disciples  of  the  Master  live  and  move, 


6  INTBODUCTORY. 

tend  not  infrequently  to  obscure  the  reality  of 
movement  from  less  to  more.  But  there  come 
hours  of  inevitable  comparison,  when  the  work  of 
time  for  the  Christian  consciousness  stands  out 
in  unmistakable  greatness,  when  new  thoughts, 
wider  purposes,  vaster  enterprises,  make  the  fact 
of  emergence  into  a  new  world  no  longer  deniable. 
And  it  needs  repeated  emphasis  that  the  move- 
ment in  our  time  out  into  the  larger  thought 
has  taken  place  in  an  astonishingly  spontaneous 
way.  Little  violence  has  been  experienced  any- 
where. The  first  temple  went  uj)  without  the 
sound  of  hammers,  and  the  new  and  magnificent 
edifice  of  Christian  faith  is  rising  as  by  a  self- 
creative  process. 

II. 

The  first  great  expansion  of  the  human  mind 
in  modern  times  began  with  the  Copernican  as- 
tronomy. The  universe  of  the  ancient  thinker 
was  insignificant,  almost  petty,  compared  with 
that  of  the  intelligent  man  of  to-day.  The  first 
impression  that  one  gets  upon  entering  that  su- 
perseded universe  is  its  narrowness,  its  want  of 
range  and  room.  One  is  surprised  at  its  meagre- 
ness,  as  one  might  fancy  a  millionaire  from  Fifth 
Avenue,  New  York,  to  be  over  the  insignificant, 
dingy  quarters  of  certain  mediaeval  kings.  Our 
planet  was  the  centre  in  the  old  astronomy,  the 
biggest  of  all  the  heavenly  bodies,  the  most  im- 


NARBOWNESS  OF  THE  OLD    WORLD.  7 

portant  from  all  points  of  view,  and  the  whole 
stellar  world  had  its  final  cause  of  being  in  min- 
istering to  the  welfare  of  the  earth.  The  unpar- 
alleled creation  hymn  with  which  the  Book  of 
Genesis  opens  is  based  upon  that  old  astronomy. 
It  could  have  been  based  upon  no  other,  for 
there  was  then  no  other.  And  the  fact  that  it 
rests  upon  superseded  science  no  more  discredits 
its  imperishable  moral  and  spiritual  worth  than  the 
immense  mass  of  outgrown  opinion  in  Dante's 
great  poem  discredits  the  enduring  splendor  of 
that  production,  and  its  permanent  value  for 
mankind.  Still,  the  fact  is  obvious  that  the  ma- 
terial universe  of  the  sublime  singer  in  Genesis 
was  exceedingly  limited:  "And  God  said,  Let 
there  be  lights  in  the  firmament  of  the  heaven  to 
divide  the  day  from  the  night;  and  let  them  be 
for  signs,  and  for  seasons,  and  for  days,  and  years : 
and  let  them  be  for  lights  in  the  firmament  of  the 
heaven  to  give  light  upon  the  earth :  and  it  was 
so.  And  God  made  the  two  great  lights:  the 
greater  light  to  rule  the  day,  and  the  lesser  light 
to  rule  the  night :  he  made  also  the  stars.  And 
God  set  them  in  the  firmament  of  the  heaven  to 
give  light  upon  the  earth,  and  to  rule  over  the 
day  and  over  the  night,  and  to  divide  the  light 
from  the  darkness."  ^  Here  the  conception  is 
that  the  whole  stellar  world  has  its  existence 
simply  as  an  attendant  upon  this  globe.     Under 

.     1  Gen.  i.  14-18. 


8  INTRODUCTORY. 

similar  conceptions  tlie  race  lived  until  far  down 
into  modern  times.  The  sense  of  vastness  was 
largely  absent  from  their  universe  as  extended  in 
space;  it  was  small,  and  necessarily  so.  It  is 
matter  of  common  history  that  the  shock  expe- 
rienced by  faith,  upon  the  publication  of  the 
Copernican  astronomy,  was  very  great.  A  wise 
Catholic  scholar  tried  to  allay  the  anxiety  con- 
cerning the  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  as  it  stood  in 
contradiction  to  the  new  science,  with  the  remark 
that  the  Bible  was  given,  not  to  teach  how  the 
heavens  go,  but  how  to  go  to  heaven.  It  has 
been  of  the  utmost  comfort  to  Christian  thinkers 
to  remember  how  swiftly,  and  on  the  whole  how 
quietly,  the  faith  of  the  church  adjusted  itself 
to  the  stupendous  revolution  in  man's  thought 
of  the  material  universe  inaugurated  by  the  Co- 
pernican astronomy.  The  new  astronomy  has 
given  grandeur  to  the  idea  of  creation,  —  has  in- 
directly attested  the  dignity  of  man,  as  being  the 
creation  that  he  has  discovered,  the  orders  and 
worlds  that  he  has  explored.  And  even  when 
man  comes  to  the  limit  of  thought,  having  swept 
within  the  field  of  vision  emj^ire  upon  empire, 
system  upon  system,  and  universe  upon  uni- 
verse, and  stands  upon  the  widest  circumference 
of  science  and  looks  beyond  into  the  infinite,  the 
infinite  is  still  his  conce23tion,  the  boundless 
spaces  are  yet  in  a  way  subject  to  him.  The 
modern  astronomy,  in  giving  such  immeasurable 


THE  EXPANSION  OF  THE  NEW.  9 

expansion  to  the  outward  world,  has  resulted 
indirectly  in  a  new  consciousness  of  the  dignity 
of  man.  For  the  greater  the  universe  becomes, 
the  more  illustriously  does  it  display  the  marvel- 
ousness  of  the  human  intellect.  The  universe  is 
man's  universe;  and  the  bigger  it  is,  the  more 
honor  does  it  reflect  upon  hun.  Infinitely  more 
faith  than  unbelief  has  come  from  the  Copernican 
conception.  In  discovering  how  petty  this  earth 
is  in  the  total  limitless  reach  of  the  stellar  uni- 
verse, man  has  rediscovered  himself  as  suj^erior  to 
all  environments,  as  of  more  worth  than  the  birds 
of  heaven  and  the  heavens  themselves.  The  indi- 
rect result  of  the  new  astronomy  in  buildino^  the 
consciousness  of  man  into  the  sense  of  dignity 
needs  to  have  fresh  emphasis  laid  upon  it  to-day. 
But  the  deepest  reason  for  this  reference  to  the 
greater  world  in  space  in  which  men  are  now 
living  is  that  the  sense  of  vastness  in  their  sur- 
roundings has  elicited  a  corresponding  mental 
trait.  For  the  intelligent  modern  man,  living  in 
the  sense  of  a  measureless  universe,  triviality  of 
conception  has  wellnigh  become  an  impossibility. 
Among  the  greatest  educators  of  our  time,  a  fore- 
most place  must  be  given  to  the  consciousness  of 
living  under  an  infinite  outward  order.  It  has 
put  the  imagination  under  a  fresh  and  diviner 
spell.  It  has  given  new  volume  and  form  to  the 
feeling  of  awe  in  the  presence  of  the  sublime.  It 
has  translated  the  sweet  illusion  of  vision  into  a 


10  INTBODUCTOBY. 

boundless  universe  of  amazing  orders  and  splen- 
dors, and  made  men  aware  that  the  symbolism  of 
sight,  with  reference  to  the  contents  of  space,  is 
but  the  merest  hint  of  the  infinite  and  overwhelm- 
ing reality.  It  has  taxed  the  mind  with  a  new  ob- 
ject, and  imparted  to  it  an  amplitude  that  has  told 
for  much.  This  large-mindedness  has  affected 
the  interpretation  of  man's  relations  to  God,  and 
the  significance  of  the  career  of  Christ.  It  has 
not  driven  thinkers  back  to  the  daring  conception 
of  Origen,  of  an  infinite  stairway  of  worlds  up 
which  the  hosts  of  mankind  are  made  to  march, 
as  the  sublime  discipline  through  which  sin  is  to 
be  overcome  and  annihilated,  and  the  final  con- 
summation of  w^hich  is  that  God  may  be  all  in 
all.  There  has  been  no  such  venturesomeness  as 
the  result  of  the  sense  of  the  exceeding  greatness 
of  the  universe  in  which  we  live.  But  there  is 
evident,  I  think,  as  the  direct  outcome  of  life 
under  the  shadow  of  an  immeasurable  material 
order,  a  new  and  large  way  of  treating  our  whole 
human  problem,  and  the  parallel  mission  of 
Christ.  An  immense  library  of  theological  liter- 
ature has  thus  been  quietly  outgrown.  Its  logic 
has  not  been  considered  and  refuted;  its  narrow 
premises  have  been  entirely  transcended.  Vener- 
ation for  human  aspiration  and  heroism,  and  for 
the  essential  that  always  aj^jiears  in  all  genuine 
forms  of  faith,  however  crude  these  forms  may 
be,  still  makes  it  pleasant  and  even  jjrofitable  to 


TRADITIONAL  OPINION   OUTGROWN.        11 

explore  the  worlds  of  the  schoolmen,  the  reform- 
ers, and  the  puritans;  but  the  most  sympathetic 
student  must  feel  that  these  former  things  have 
passed  away.  Without  the  denial  of  any  one  of 
their  greater  beliefs,  this  feeling  is  fixed.  The 
thing  that  makes  them  obsolete  is  the  pettiness 
of  their  world,  the  narrowness  of  their  outlook, 
the  want  of  breadth  and  range  of  mind.  Through 
the  discipline  of  the  world  in  which  we  live,  im- 
measurably extended  in  space  as  it  is,  we  have 
quietly  transcended  the  habits  of  thought  of  a 
former  age.  It  was  no  disrespect  for  the  past, 
or  want  of  veneration  for  the  intellectual  power 
of  his  predecessors,  least  of  all  any  deficiency  of 
appreciation  of  the  nobleness  of  philosophy  and 
theology  as  callings,  that  led  Hegel  to  say,  in 
answer  to  an  invitation  to  give  instruction  in 
logic  and  traditional  theological  opinion,  that 
that  would  be  to  become  "  white  washer  and  chim- 
ney-sweep "  at  the  same  time.  His  conception  of 
the  human  mind,  and  of  God  in  history,  utterly 
transcended,  and  rendered  obsolete  for  him,  the 
traditional  German  thought  in  which  he  was 
bred.  Our  universe  is  a  vast,  an  infinite  uni- 
verse, and  our  conceptions  in  the  realm  of  Chris- 
tian faith  must  have  this  vast  and  infinite  char- 
acter. 

III. 

But   far   more   important   than  the  indefinite 
enlargement  in  space  is  the  enormous  extension 


12  INTBODUCTOBY. 

in  time  that  our  human  world  has  undergone. 
A  new  idea  of  history,  ahnost  bewildering  in  its 
greatness,  has  taken  possession  of  the  mind  of 
this  century.  Instead  of  a  race  with  a  career 
running  only  for  six  thousand  years,  we  have  a 
humanity  with  a  probable  history  of  a  hundred 
thousand  years.  The  birth  and  growth  of  the 
very  idea  of  humanity,  and  the  expanse  of  time 
over  which  it  must  be  carried  and  made  good,  is 
perplexing  in  the  extreme.  The  burden  of  the 
world  was  heavy  upon  the  prophetic  heart  in  the 
ancient  age,  but  it  is  incalculably  heavier  to-day. 
It  is  a  picture  of  great  scope  and  impressiveness 
that  Carlyle  paints  in  his  French  Revolution,  his 
Frederick  the  Great,  and  his  Oliver  Cromwell, 
but  the  picture  gives  only  a  hint  of  the  life  of 
three  modern  nations  in  the  two  centuries  pre- 
ceding our  own,  —  the  French  nation  and  the 
Prussian  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the 
English  in  the  seventeenth;  the  historic  vista 
extends  no  farther.  It  is  a  wonderful  pageant 
that  Gibbon  causes  to  pass  before  the  eye  of  the 
student  in  his  Decline  and  Fall  of  Rome,  but  the 
more  than  a  thousand  years  through  which  he 
carries  his  work,  measured  against  historic  time, 
are  but  as  yesterday  when  it  is  past,  or  as  a 
watch  in  the  night.  It  is  a  marvelous  drama 
that  Grote  develops  in  his  great  History  of 
Greece,  and  the  action  and  the  characters  and 
the  tragic  issues  have  an  abiding  and  wonderful 


NEW  CONCEPTION  OF  HISTORY.  13 

meaning:  still  the  twelve  volumes  deal  with  a 
very  small  part  of  the  race,  and  a  very  brief 
period  of  time.  Rawlinson  puts  before  us  a  vast 
and  dim  world  in  his  Five  Ancient  Monarchies ; 
and  we  feel  the  spell  of  great  antiquity  as  we 
read  his  pages,  and  are  touched  with  the  sense  of 
the  dark  and  stormy  morning  of  our  humanity. 
But  when  we  have  passed  from  Carlyle  to  Gib- 
bon, from  Gibbon  to  Grote,  from  Grote  to  Raw- 
linson,  we  have  come  only  to  the  beginning  of 
the  new  conception  of  history.  The  countless 
silent  centuries  that  lie  behind  recorded  history 
are  to-day  one  of  the  most  touching,  fascinating, 
and  bewildering  objects  of  thought.  They  have 
at  last  risen  from  their  long  sleep;  they  have 
finally  found  recognition ;  their  labor  and  sorrow 
in  preparing  the  way  for  historic  man  is  no  longer 
ignored;  the  tears  and  the  blood  by  which  they 
wrought  out  the  physical  forms  from  which  our 
better  life  has  come,  and  the  beginnings  of  civili- 
zation that  they  w(^re  able  to  hand  on  to  their 
more  fortunate  successors,  are  becoming  part  of 
the  sympathetic  and  grateful  recollection  of  man- 
kind. It  is  indeed  strange,  this  resurrection  of 
a  dead  world,  this  emancipation  from  oblivion  of 
a  forgotten  humanity,  this  return  to  recognition 
and  brotherhood  with  the  later  generations  of  the 
millions  that  lived  in  the  dust  behmd  the  records 
of  history,  and  looked  "with  dumb  eyes  to  the 
silence  of  the  skies."     It  is  a  speaking  symbol 


14  INTBODUCTOBY. 

of  the  possible  reach  of  human  imagination  and 
sympathy,  of  the  essential  unity  of  the  race,  of 
the  general  sublime  memorial  of  all  the  serving 
and  aspiring  ages  that  shall  at  last  be  erected  in 
the  grateful  and  venerative  memory  of  mankind. 
Here,  then,  is  the  second  call  for  the  new  habit 
of  thought.  Here  is  the  second  cause  of  the 
revolution  that  has  already  taken  ]3lace  in  the 
nobler  mind  of  the  church.  The  problem  is  our 
problem,  and  the  old  mental  mood  is  totally  in- 
adequate to  cope  with  it.  The  Hebrew  form  of 
the  problem,  the  apostolic  form  of  the  problem, 
the  mediaeval  and  puritan  forms  of  it,  are  not  large 
enough  for  that  which  confronts  the  believer 
to-day.  The  Hebrew  prophet  was  for  the  most 
part  satisfied  with  the  salvation  of  the  remnant 
of  Israel,  while  the  hostile  contemporaneous  Gen- 
tile world  was  under  doom.  The  universalism 
of  the  Old  Testament  seer  concerns  the  golden 
ages  of  the  future,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
multitudinous  populations  of  the  past.  The  apos- 
tle Paul  has  indeed  a  magnificent  sense  of  history, 
and  a  profound  philosoj^hy  of  it,  as  is  abun- 
dantly attested  by  his  speech  to  the  Athenians, 
and  by  passages  of  the  greatest  moment  in  the 
letters  to  the  Galatians  and  Romans.  But  the 
ideal  of  a  Christ  for  humanity,  ultimate  as  a 
form  of  thought  although  it  is,  and  capable  of 
infinite  expansion  in  answer  to  the  developments 
of  time  and  the  facts  of  the  case,  could  not  have 


RESTRICTED  SALVATION  INCREDIBLE.      15 

meant  for  liim  what  it  must  mean  for  tlie  believer 
to-day.  The  restricted  conception  of  salvation 
inaugurated  under  the  apparent  appalling  com- 
pulsion of  facts  by  Augustine,  cherished  through 
the  Middle  Ages,  revitalized  by  the  reformers, 
and  descending  with  the  puritan  inheritance  to  the 
present  generation,  is  possible  to  those  only  who 
shut  their  eyes  to  the  vastness  of  human  history. 
The  consciousness  of  history  as  of  unmeasured 
extent,  and  as  embracing  countless  multitudes  of 
the  human  race,  inferior  doubtless  in  every  way 
to  the  men  of  to-day,  but  u23on  whose  sacrifices 
and  rude  civilizations,  representing  worlds  of 
struggle  and  suffering,  the  modern  age  has  built, 
and  without  which  even  genius  itself  would  be 
comparatively  helpless,  is  one  of  the  great  forces 
that  are  calling  for  a  new  conception  of  salvation. 
It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  the  unmeasured 
worlds  of  prehistoric  man  that  at  the  present 
time  are  rolling  into  the  vision  of  the  nobler 
spirits,  and  whose  wonderful  contributions  in  the 
way  of  brain  and  muscle  and  rude  inventions,  of 
the  indispensable  preliminaries  of  civilization,  are 
receiving  wider  and  more  reverent  recognition, 
do  not  stand  in  the  eternal  loving  thought  of  God 
in  Christ.  The  idea  that  confines  salvation  to 
the  remnant,  whether  that  be  the  remnant  of  the 
Hebrew  prophet,  or  that  of  the  mediaeval  saint, 
or  of  the  puritan,  is  to-day  incredible.  If  cher- 
ished,  it  can  have  but  one  issue,  —  atheism. 


16  INTBODUCTORY. 

The  church  is  on  trial.  The  humanity  that 
she  must  inchide  in  her  faith  and  prayer  and 
sympathy  has  multij^lied  itself  like  the  sand  of 
the  sea,  and  crowds  the  expanded  spaces  of  time 
with  hosts  that  no  man  can  number.  The  think- 
ing world  of  to-day  will  insist  upon  an  answer  to 
the  question  whether  the  Christ  of  the  modern 
preacher  has  any  relation  to  this  recovered  and 
piteously  needy  humanity.  A  great  many,  wdio 
are  afraid  of  breadth,  are  looking  favorably  upon 
the  scientific  solution,  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
Among  the  lower  animals,  from  countless  multi- 
tudes that  cannot  succeed,  and  that  are  born  to 
fail,  a  few  strong  specimens  are  found  that  pre- 
vail over  the  hard  conditions  and  live  on.  From 
these  come  swarms  of  offspring,  the  overwhelm- 
ing majority  of  which  are  under  certain  doom, 
and  from  whose  doomed  multitudes  a  second 
selection  of  the  strong  is  made,  to  carry  onward 
the  torch  of  life.  Nature,  according  to  this  con- 
ception, produces  more  than  she  wants,  more 
than  can  by  any  possibility  live,  in  order  that 
from  this  excess  of  numbers  she  may  have  a 
better  pick.  Her  procedure  is  perfectly  frank 
and  undisguised.  She  wants  a  few  fine  speci- 
mens, with  which  to  carry  the  race  higher,  and 
she  thinks  that  she  will  succeed  better  if  she 
shall  have  a  larger  number  from  which  to  choose. 
Care  for  the  unfit  she  has  none,  regard  for  the 
perishing  is  utterly  foreign  to  her  heart.     She 


SURVIVAL   OF  THE  FITTEST.  17 

multiplies  to  inconceivable  excess  the  forms  of 
life,  in  order  that  the  chances  for  selection  of  the 
fit  may  be  indefinitely  improved.  The  unfit  are 
her  blunder,  the  piteous  witnesses  of  her  inca- 
pacity and  heartlessness.  This  is  the  way  in 
which  science  disposes  of  the  abortive  life  in  the 
lower  animal  kingdoms.  The  question  is,  whether 
it  is  safe  for  the  church  to  look  with  favor  upon 
this  scientific  method.  It  may  be  well  enough 
in  the  non-moral  sphere,  but  what  shall  be  said 
of  it  when  it  stands  as  the  self -disclosure  of  the 
moral  head  of  the  universe,  and  the  law  accord- 
ing to  which  he  deals  with  mankind?  If  only 
the  morally  fit  survive,  —  if  the  creation  of  man- 
kind is  purposely  excessive  in  order  that  from 
the  wider  reprobation  a  larger  election  may  be 
made,  —  the  old  theology  is  indeed  safe,  but  the 
religion  of  Christ  is  gone.  If  the  method  of 
God  with  humanity  is  but  another  aspect  of  the 
scientific  doctrine  of  the  salvation  of  the  strong, 
if  his  government  is  grounded  upon  a  necessary 
reprobation  and  election,  then  He  who  came  to 
seek  and  to  save  the  lost  is  not  his  Son.  For  the 
method  of  Jesus  is  in  absolute  contradiction  to  that 
procedure,  and  his  Spirit  is  the  eternal  arraign- 
ment and  condemnation  of  irresponsible  Almight- 
iness.  Fools  should  never  handle  dangerous 
tools,  and  those  who,  in  the  name  of  conserva- 
tism, are  courting  the  scientific  doctrine  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest,  are  sadly  in  need  of  this 


18  INTRODUCTOBY. 

admonition.  The  voices  whicli  seem  so  sweet  to 
the  theologian  who  is  afraid  of  the  breadth  of  the 
modern  time,  and  who  is  anxious  to  conserve 
venerable  theological  traditions,  are  the  songs  of 
sirens,  and  "near  by  is  a  great  heap  of  rotting 
human  bones;  fragments  of  skin  are  shriveled 
on  them.  Therefore  sail  on."  ^  On  this  basis  the 
old  theology  is  safe,  but  the  Christian  religion 
and  the  mighty  conception  of  a  divine  humanity 
are  doomed.  The  new  consciousness  of  history, 
the  expansion  of  our  human  world  in  time,  is  the 
opportunity  of  the  Christian  religion,  its  fresh 
and  ampler  vindication,  and  it  is  the  hour  of  trial 
for  the  church  of  to-day.  If  the  present  reach 
of  the  nobler  imagination,  the  rich  increase  of 
historic  sense  and  sympathy,  and  the  consciousness 
of  a  human  communion  that  is  indefinably  and 
mysteriously  great,  does  not  result  in  conceptions 
worthier  Christ,  more  in  accord  with  that  which 
in  the  soul  is  likest  God,  the  Christian  thinkers, 
and  all  those  who  are  responsible  for  the  forms 
of  faith  for  this  generation,  will  miss  an  amazing 
chance  to  serve  the  kingdom  of  God.  One  feels 
that,  if  out  of  the  profounder  and  better  life  of 
the  time  religious  conceptions  should  arise,  they 
would  be  so  close  an  approximation  to  the  mind 
of  Christ  as  to  possess  a  power  almost  elemental. 
The  truth  in  its  true  form  is  the  mightiest  thing 
on  earth:  it  does  not  need  eloquence  or  skill  or 

1  Odyssey,  book  xii..  Professor  Palmer's  translation. 


THE  SENSE  OF  HUMANITY.  19 

passion  to  plead  its  claims;  it  makes  way  for 
itself;  rises  upon  mankind  as  the  unclouded  sun 
does  upon  the  earth,  and  puts  the  world  under 
the  sense  of  its  glory  and  beneficent  power. 

IV. 

Another  modifying  force  of  the  time  is  the  sense 
of  a  contemporaneous  humanity.  The  world  has 
grown  much  smaller  in  the  last  half  century :  the 
time  consumed  in  a  journey  to  Washington,  a 
hundred  years  ago,  would  to-day  take  one  almost 
round  the  globe.  The  various  populations  of  the 
planet  have  met  and  looked  one  another  in  the 
face.  The  different  forms  of  contemporaneous 
civilization  are  under  study  and  inter-comparison, 
and  the  prevailing  mood  among  believing  scholars 
is  that  the  Christian  creed  must  include  the  race 
as  the  subject  of  the  Divine  education.  To-day 
there  is  a  whole  world  to  be  saved,  and  one's 
plan  of  salvation  must  be  adequate  to  the  practi- 
cal opportunity.  The  absoluteness  of  Christian- 
ity is  one  of  the  great  words  of  this  generation. 
The  serious  consideration  of  that  word  and  its 
complete  vindication  would  work  a  revolution  in 
traditional  theological  opinion.  The  absoluteness 
of  Christianity  does  not  merely  mean  that  it  is  to 
supersede  all  other  religions.  I  believe  it  does 
mean  that.  But  it  must  also  mean  the  disclosure 
of  the  relation  of  the  extra-Christian  world  to 
Christ  in  the  divine  plan  of  its  existence.     To 


20  INTRODUCTORY. 

proclaim  Christianity  as  the  absokite  religion,  to 
regard  it  as  superseding  and  doing  away  with  all 
other  forms  of  faith,  and  to  fail  to  vindicate  its 
everlasting  relation  to  all  men  because  they  are 
men,  is  a  one-sided  and  poor  procedure.  If 
Christianity  is  absolute,  that  absoluteness  must 
be  shown,  in  part  at  least,  by  the  final  divine 
interpretation  which  it  puts  upon  the  previous 
imperfect  disciplines  of  the  various  nations  to 
wdiom  it  is  sent.  The  scholarship  of  the  Chris- 
tian world,  the  large  and  sympathetic  study  of 
the  religions  of  mankind,  the  feelings  bred  by 
the  honorable  international  trade  of  the  earth, 
the  steady  emergence  of  a  cosmopolitan  habit  of 
mind,  and  the  wonderful  growth  of  the  idea  of 
humanity,  make  it  impossible  longer  to  live  in 
the  traditional  theology.  It  is  not  big  enough, 
nor  is  it  good  enough  as  theoretic  support  and 
inspiration  for  the  best  interests  and  activities  of 
the  world  to-day.  The  vast  missionary  enterprise 
of  the  church  must  ever  demand  a  larger  conse- 
cration of  wealth,  a  nobler'  sacrifice,  a  wider 
devotion;  but  the  causal  fountain  of  all  this  is 
the  character  of  faith.  There  is  at  present  no 
adequate  theoretic  support  and  incentive  for  this 
magnificent  enterprise  of  the  church  of  our  time. 
The  moment  that  the  traditional  theology  is  uti- 
lized in  developing  enthusiasm  for  foreign  mis- 
sions, that  moment  the  conscience  of  the  best 
men  turns  away  from  the  dismal  business;  and 


MISSIONS  AND   THEOLOGY.  21 

only  as  the  traditionalist  abandons  theology  and 
betakes  himself  to  Christianity  in  its  New  Testa- 
ment form,  and  stakes  everything  upon  the  pre- 
vailing passion  of  human  love  as  it  is  born  and 
fired  out  of  the  heart  of  Christ  and  out  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God,  does  he  make  his  appeal 
effective  and  overwhelming.  The  fact  that  the 
missionary  work  of  the  churches  was  founded 
upon  the  old  theology  is  no  reason  why  it  should 
be  continued  upon  that  basis.  It  was,  indeed, 
founded  upon  the  love  of  God  in  Christ  for  the 
world,  and  it  must  be  built  again  upon  that  fun- 
damental truth  as  it  is  reflected  in  the  larger 
intelligence  of  the  time.  Faith  without  works  is 
dead,  and  the  best  theology  that  does  nothing  is 
worse  than  a  poor  theology  that  agonizes  to  save 
the  world.  Nevertheless,  a  living  faith  is  the 
only  permanent  source  of  missionary  endeavor, 
and  the  faith  that  is  adequate  to  the  world-enter- 
prises now  on  the  hands  of  the  church  must 
issue  in  wider  and  richer  practical  results.  The 
missionary  enterprise  has  transcended  the  concep- 
tion in  which  it  originated :  it  has  led  the  church 
that  inaugiirated  it  into  a  new  world;  it  has  been 
fruitful  of  ideas  and  feelings  beyond  all  expecta- 
tion ;  and  to-day  it  is  largely  a  stupendous  pedes- 
tal in  the  air,  waiting  for  the  new  conception  of 
the  mission  of  God  in  Christ  to  be  put  under  it 
as  adequate  and  everlasting  support. 


22  INTRODUCTOBY. 


V. 


Another  aspect  of  the  religious  problem  of  the 
times  sums  itself  up  in  the  question  whether  the 
Kingdom  of  the  Spirit  shall  be  regarded  as  an 
expression  of  the  Kingdom  of  Christ.  In  other 
words,  Is  the  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit  the  Kingdom 
of  the  Spirit  of  Christ?  Has  the  world  of  the 
Spirit  escaped  from  the  dominion  of  our  Lord? 
If  that  is  true,  it  means  the  surrender  of  his 
supreme  divinity,  and  the  abandonment  of  the 
claim  that  his  religion  is  the  absolute  religion. 
The  world  of  the  Spirit  is  a  phenomenon  to  be 
revered.  In  it  there  is  much  immediate  agree- 
ment.; there  is  a  common  philosophy  for  all  its 
inhabitants.  Humanity  is  regarded  as  a  spiritual 
totality  moving  and  having  its  being  in  the  life 
of  the  Eternal.  Its  reality  is  independent  of 
space  and  time;  it  requires  neither  the  witness 
of  history  nor  the  power  of  argument  to  attest  it; 
it  is  intuitively,  spiritually  discerned,  the  discov- 
ery of  the  higher  reason,  the  vision  of  the  soul 
alive  with  the  divine.  Human  relations  are  de- 
fined in  terms  of  an  austere  morality,  society  is 
construed  as  an  organism  subservient  to  an  ulti- 
mate ethical  purpose,  and  behind  mankind  is  the 
Infinite  with  transcendent  plans  of  grace.  The 
ethical  constitution,  the  ethical  organization  of 
life,  and  its  immediate  fellowship  with  the  divine, 
is  the  high  thought  common  to  those  who  endeavor 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THE  SPIRIT.  23 

to  live  in  the  Spirit.  Fichte  is  the  great  apostle 
of  this  order  in  our  century.  The  Kingdom  of 
the  Spirit  was  with  him  the  ultimate  reality,  and 
Christianity  its  provincial,  temporary,  although 
sublime  expression.  "There  is  absolutely  no 
Being  and  no  Life  beyond  the  immediate  Divine 
Life.  So  far  as  we  have  now  proceeded  in  our 
interpretation  of  the  proem  to  the  Johannean 
Gospel,  we  have  met  only  with  what  is  absolutely 
and  eternally  true.  At  this  point  begins  that 
which  possesses  validity  only  for  the  time  of 
Jesus  and  the  establishment  of  Christianity,  and 
for  the  necessary  standpoint  of  the  apostles,  — 
the  historical,  not  in  any  way  metaphysical,  prop- 
osition that  this  absolute  and  immediate  existence 
of  God,  the  Eternal  Knowledge  or  Word,  pure 
and  undefiled  as  it  is  in  itself,  without  any  admix- 
ture of  impurity  or  darkness,  or  any  merely  indi- 
vidual limitation,  manifested  itself  in  a  personal, 
sensible,  human  existence,"  —  in  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth. Fichte  distinguishes  between  the  philoso- 
phy of  the  prelude  to  the  Fourth  Gospel,  which  is 
absolutely  and  eternally  true,  and  the  historical 
facts  of  Christianity  and  their  interpretation  by 
its  Founder  and  his  apostles,  which  are  true 
"only  from  the  temporary  point  of  view  of  Jesus 
and  his  apostles."^  The  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit 
and  the  Kingdom  of  Jesus  are  not,  in  Fichte 's 
thought,  identical;  the  former  is  the  final  reality, 
1  The  Way  towards  the  Blessed  Life,  lect.  vi.  pp.  381,  388. 


24  INTBODUCTORY. 

tlie  latter  simply  the  greatest  of  its  historic  mani- 
festations. This  mood  toward  the  realm  of  the 
spiritual  and  also  toward  Christianity,  Carlyle 
inherited  from  Fichte.  For  Carlyle,  the  gospel 
is  a  mythus,  with  a  transcendent  expression,  in 
the  character  of  Jesus,  of  the  moral  order  of  the 
world.  The  common  philosophy  is  the  sover- 
eignty of  spiritual  ideas  within  the  limits  of  the 
natural  order.  The  sequences  of  nature  are  the 
fixed  and  unalterable  forms  of  the  manifestation 
and  supremacy  of  the  Spirit;  and  the  "God-in- 
spired man,"  even  at  his  highest,  is  but  the  sym- 
bol of  the  Absolute.  History  is  but  the  clothes, 
the  Idea  is  the  reality.  This  is  the  great  but 
one-sided  thought  of  Carlyle' s  deepest  work. 
Sartor  Resartus.  Emerson  continues  the  same 
tradition.  The  moral  order  of  the  world,  the 
Kingdom  of  the  Spirit,  is  the  infinite  reality,  and 
historical  Christianity  is  the  venerable  and  beau- 
tiful but  local  revelation  of  that.  This  is  es- 
sentially the  ground  of  the  idealistic  school  in 
Germany,  of  which  Pfleiderer  is  a  distinguished 
representative,  and  of  modern  Unitarianism,  at 
least  in  its  prevailing  phase.  And  at  this  point 
one  of  the  deepest  and  most  urgent  of  the  ques- 
tions of  to-day  is  started,  —  Is  the  Kingdom  of 
the  Spirit  the  Kingdom  of  our  Lord  ?  Or  has  it 
transcended  him  and  his  conception? 

For  a  considerable  number  of  noble  men,  the 
answer  must  be  given  that  it  has.     The  Kingdom 


UNHISTOEICAL  IDEALISM.  25 

of  the  Sj)irit  is  not  the  Kingdom  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Christ  is  in  it  as  superlative  servant,  but  not  as 
King.  The  persons  to  whom  I  refer  have  parted 
company  with  historic  Christianity.  They  have 
found  current  orthodox  notions  utterly  inadequate 
to  the  modern  situation,  and,  having  no  other 
equally  accessible  means  for  judging  historic 
Christianity,  they  have  come  to  similar  conclu- 
sions in  regard  to  it.  The  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit 
has  in  many  cases  cut  itself  free  from  the  domin- 
ion of  Christ,  and  that  defines  afresh  the  duty 
of  the  hour  for  the  Christian  thinker.  He  must 
show  that  the  conception  of  Christ  underlying 
the  rejection  is  wholly  inadequate;  that  the  break 
has  come  because  the  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit  has 
been  conceived  in  the  strength  of  Christ  without 
the  acknowledgment  of  his  indispensable  aid; 
that  the  high  philosophy  originated  in  the  dis- 
carded history,  and  lives  mainly  because  rooted 
in  the  perennial  vitality  of  the  gospel.  Fichte's 
gi'and  characterizations  of  Jesus  are  fatal  to  his 
unhistorical  idealism.  "An  insight  into  the  ab- 
solute unity  of  the  human  existence  with  the 
Divine  is  certainly  the  profoundest  that  man  can 
attain.  Before  Jesus,  this  knowledge  had  no- 
where existed ;  and  since  his  time,  we  may  almost 
say  down  even  to  the  present  day,  it  has  again 
been  as  good  as  rooted  out  and  lost,  at  least  in 
profane  cognition.  Jesus,  however,  was  evidently 
in  possession  of  this  insight;  as  we  shall  incon- 


26  INTBOD  UCTOR  Y. 

testably  find,  were  it  only  in  tlie  Gospel  of  John. 
How,  then,  came  Jesus  by  this  insight  ?  .  .  .  How 
the  first  discoverer,  separated  from  centuries  before 
him  and  centuries  after  him  by  the  exclusive  pos- 
session of  this  insight,  did  attain  to  it,  —  this  is 
an  exceeding  great  wonder.  And  so  it  is  in  fact 
true  .  .  .  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is,  in  a  wholly 
peculiar  manner,  attributable  to  no  one  but  him, 
the  only -begotten  and  first-born  Son  of  God ;  and 
that  all  ages,  which  are  capable  of  understanding 
him  at  all,  must  recognize  him  in  this  character."  ^ 
Idealism  within  the  terms  of  naturalism  cannot 
digest  views  so  exalted  of  the  historic  Jesus. 
But  Fichte  contends  "that  all  those  who  since 
Jesus  have  come  into  union  with  God  have  come 
into  union  with  God  through  him.  And  thus  it 
is  confirmed  in  every  way  that,  even  to  the  end 
of  time,  all  wise  and  intelligent  men  must  bow 
themselves  reverently  before  this  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth; and  that  the  more  wise,  intelligent,  and 
noble  they  themselves  are,  the  more  humbly"  will 
they  recognize  the  exceeding  nobleness  of  this 
great  and  glorious  manifestation  of  the  Divine 
Life."^  With  this  profound  confession  of  the 
chief  apostle  of  spiritual  idealism  before  him,  the 
Christian  thinker  must  show  that  the  Kingdom  of 
the  Spirit  is  exposed  to  two  fatal  dangers  when 
separated  from  the  Kingdom  of  Christ.     The  first 

1  The  Way  towards  the  Blessed  Life,  lect.  vi.  p.  390. 

2  Ibid.,  lect.  vi.  p.  391. 


DANGERS  OF  BREADTH.  27 

is  the  challenge  of  its  reality  from  the  terrible 
actual  of  the  world's  life.  It  may  be  real  for 
the  philosophers  and  mystics,  but  is  it  real  for 
ordinary  men?  Are  they  organized  in  the  life  of 
the  Spirit  ?  The  belief  will  persist  only  as  a  com- 
forting dream,  a  holy  hallucination,  if  it  is  per- 
manently detached  from  Him  who  is  the  revealer 
of  the  order  both  of  the  Divine  and  the  human. 
The  faith  has  so  much  against  it  that,  unless  it 
returns  to  its  original  source  in  Christ,  it  cannot 
hope  to  live  and  prevail.  The  second  peril  con- 
cerns the  breadth  of  this  faith.  It  is  matter  of 
history  that  the  broadening  of  creeds  has  usually 
been  accompanied  by  a  great  decay  of  zeal  on  the 
part  of  believers.  The  consciousness  of  this  his- 
toric fact  makes  many  progressively  inclined 
spirits  in  the  present  generation  turn  back  from 
progress,  since  it  seems  to  mean  loss  of  interest 
for  the  sinful  and  the  weak,  —  loss  of  the  passion 
of  sacrifice  for  bringing  souls  into  the  better  life. 
As  a  rule,  and  with  numerous  magnificent  excep- 
tions, the  incompetent  in  theology  have  been  the 
zealots  in  practical  helpfulness,  while  the  masters 
in  high  theory  have  been  indifferent  to  the  actual 
state  of  the  world's  life.  Unless  its  breadth 
shall  be  accompanied  by  depth  and  passion,  the 
modern  faith  will  cease  to  be  militant.  Its  en- 
thusiasm will  become  contemptuous  pity  for  the 
accursed  multitudes  who  know  not  the  law,  and 
in  a  generation  it  will  die  from  the  loss  of  ethical 


28  INTEODUCTOBY. 

vitality.  The  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit  that  is  not 
the  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  cannot  live  a 
long  or  a  vigorous  life.  Bereaved  of  the  authen- 
tication of  the  Divine  history,  and  robbed  of  the 
fountains  of  spiritual  passion  that  flow  from  the 
transcendent  Person  of  the  Lord,  the  broad  the- 
ology of  Unitarian,  Episcopalian,  and  Congrega- 
tionalist  alike  will  reduce  itself  to  a  dream,  and 
the  dream  will  at  last  fail  of  sufficient  vitality  to 
entertain  a  luxurious  and  sleejDing  church. 

VI. 

Something  approaching  the  total  problem  of 
the  Christian  thinker  of  to-day  begins  to  come 
in  sight.  He  is  living  in  a  world  indefinitely 
extended  in  space  and  time.  The  idea  of  crea- 
tion has  undergone  a  marvelous  transformation 
and  expansion,  and  history  is  so  different  in  reach 
and  in  depth  to  the  present  generation  as  almost 
to  mean  a  new  thing.  The  nations  of  the  earth 
are  no  longer  mere  names  one  to  another.  Much 
of  the  business  of  mankind  is  cosmo23olitan,  and 
science  and  art  and  philosophy  are  putting  on 
forms  for  the  world.  A  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit 
has  risen  in  our  day,  appropriating  the  wealth 
of  all  faiths,  gTounding  itself  upon  a  noble  phi- 
losophy, isolating  itself  from  particular  times  and 
places,  relying  for  support  upon  no  history,  how- 
ever sacred,  and  proposing  to  stand  in  its  own 
strength  against  the  whole  hostile  world  of  the 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  TIME.  29 

actual.  The  question  must  arise  whether  the 
grand  historic  faith  in  Jesus  as  the  Incarnate  Son 
of  God  can  cover  this  new  world, —  whether  his 
sovereignty  may  be  extended  over  it,  whether  its 
one  great  need  is  not  the  acknowledgment  of  his 
eternal  authority.  This  is  my  profound  belief, 
and  out  of  that  belief  the  discussion  contained  in 
the  following  pages  has  grown.  The  escape  of 
our  human  world  into  the  new  spaces  and  the 
new  times,  the  expansion  of  the  material  order  to 
infinity  and  the  extension  of  history  to  eonian 
periods,  the  gathering  of  the  nations  into  the 
consciousness  of  a  contemporaneous  humanity, 
and  the  mighty  growth  of  the  Kingdom  of  the 
Spirit,  are  blessings  for  which  it  is  imposible  to 
be  too  thankful.  Mankind  have  been  brought 
out  into  a  large  place,  and  the  daily  vision  is 
of  broad  rivers  and  streams.  But  unless  Christ 
shall  be  installed  over  this  new  world,  it  will 
simply  be  a  larger  and  more  splendid  corpse  than 
the  old.  Over  the  total  worlds  of  space,  and 
time,  and  present  humanity,  and  the  spirit,  he 
must  be  recognized  as  supreme;  and  these  king- 
doms with  all  their  glory,  if  that  glory  is  not  to 
fade  into  a  dream  and  the  highest  hope  of  man- 
kind is  not  to  be  blasted,  must  become  the  king- 
doms of  our  Lord  and  his  Christ. 

Our  modern  world  looks  as  if  it  were  getting 
ready  for  a  new  conception  of  Christ.  There  is 
gathering  from  all  points  of  the  compass  of  seri- 


30  INTRODUCTORY. 

ous  religious  tlioiiglit  a  volume  of  insight  and 
appreciation  of  him  that  must  finally  overwhelm 
the  public  mind  with  the  sense  of  his  absolute- 
ness for  humanity.  To  one  who  views  Niagara 
from  a  distance,  the  promise  of  all  that  after- 
wards happens  that  one  sees  in  the  river  above  is 
the  infinitely  absorbing  thing.  When  within  a 
mile  of  the  end,  the  great  river  grows  serious, 
everything  begins  to  mean  something;  there  is 
hurry,  and  leap  to  right  and  left,  tumultuous 
movement,  with  a  darker  frown  settling  over  it, 
—  a  setting  of  the  current  toward  the  one  grand 
centre,  a  gathering  and  massing  of  the  waters  for 
some  magnificent  purpose,  a  rolling  together  in 
a  sort  of  terrible  joy  in  anticipation  of  the  final 
stupendous  plunge.  The  cataract  is  constituted 
by  the  tremendous  crowding  and  pushing  from 
above;  the  van  of  the  river  must  leap  into  the 
abyss;  the  force  back  of  it  is  simply  irresistible. 
Something  like  this  I  think  I  see  in  reference  to 
the  coming  acceptance  of  Christ's  absoluteness 
for  mankind.  Everywhere  the  vision  is  opening 
to  the  reality  of  his  presence  in  the  world.  The 
old  Christ  conception  is  becoming  new  in  the 
current  thoughts,  insights,  and  ajjpreciations  of 
the  time.  There  is  a  gathering  of  discernment 
toward  this  great  centre.  No  one  knew  what 
direct  appeal  to  God  meant  to  the  men  of  the 
sixteenth  century  until  Luther's  words  revealed 
it,  and  few  men  to-day  have  any  adequate  sense 


OUB  DEPENDENCE   UPON  CHRIST.         31 

of  what  Christ  means  to  the  world.  Some  day, 
some  voice  or  book  will  make  the  world  aware  of 
what  is  even  now  lying  deep  in  its  heart.  Christ 
is  the  creator  of  our  human  world.  The  worth 
of  the  individual,  the  reality  of  social  imion,  the 
sanctity  of  home,  the  infinite  meaning  of  love, 
the  eternal  validity  of  our  ideas  of  righteousness, 
freedom,  and  God,  all  the  ultimate  realities  of 
our  human  world,  are  the  creation  of  Christ.  We 
are  born  into  his  world ;  we  wake  and  sleep,  work 
and  rest,  rejoice  and  weep,  live  and  die  in  it. 

"  Through  Him  the  first  fond  prayers  are  said, 
Our  lips  of  childhood  frame  ; 
The  last  low  whispers  of  our  dead 
Are  burdened  with  his  name." 

And  this  consciousness  that  Christ  cannot  be 
transcended  —  that,  as  the  form  of  religious 
thought,  the  inspiration  to  religious  feeling,  the 
ideal  for  religious  character,  and  the  mould  in 
which  the  ultimate  philosophy  of  the  universe 
must  be  run,  he  is  absolute  for  humanity  —  will 
force  itself  before  very  long  into  some  new  and 
epoch-making  expression. 

VII. 

What  manner  of  man  he  must  be,  who  is  to 
give  epoch-making  expression  to  the  new  con- 
sciousness of  Christ,  it  is  not  difficult  to  imagine. 
He  must  know  the  method  of  physical  science, 
and  be  in  sympathy  with  its  great  generalizations ; 


32  INTBODUCTOBY. 

he  must  be  at  home  in  the  kingdom  of  thought, 
familiar  with  the  noble  and  fruitful  ideas  in  phi- 
losophy, a  companion  of  the  imperial  thinkers  of 
the  race;  he  must  have  at  his  tongue's  end  the 
salient  facts  of  Christian  history,  and  the  funda- 
mental conceptions  and  distinctions  of  historic 
theology;  he  must  be  a  master  of  the  new  bib- 
lical learning,  widely  and  deeply  versed  in  the 
classical  literatures  of  the  world,  and  able  to 
work  in  the  consciousness  of  the  true  interpreta- 
tion of  the  religions  of  the  world;  and,  in  addi- 
tion to  all  this,  he  must  have  original  power. 
For  this  apparatus  of  learning  is  but  the  intro- 
duction to  such  work  as  to-day  needs  to  be  done. 
In  many  men  there  are  approaches  to  the  neces- 
sary scholarship;  but  what  one  longs  for,  as  the 
gift  of  God  to  our  time,  is  some  one  with  eyes 
for  the  infinite  meaning  of  the  faith  that  believers 
have  inherited,  of  the  conceptions  under  which 
they  are  living,  of  the  realities  from  which  they 
are  deriving  the  strength  and  hope  of  existence. 
There  never  was  such  an  opportunity  for  scholar- 
ship as  now,  and  never  a  time  when  mere  learn- 
ing was  so  impotent.  The  stuff  of  which  faith 
and  life  and  civilizations  are  made  is  here,  and 
we  need  eyes  for  the  adequate  ajjpreciation  and 
use  of  the  stuff.  The  loudest  call  is  not  for  the 
venturesome  spirit  who  shall  ascend  into  heaven 
to  bring  Christ  down,  or  descend  into  the  depths 
to  bring  Christ  up,  but  for  the  man  who  shall 


THE  PROPHET  TO  COME.  33 

fathom  tlie  significance  of  the  Word  that  is  nigh 
our  humanity.  There  is  little  hope  for  the  pro- 
founder  and  more  vital  ascertainment  of  the  con- 
tent of  the  Christ  fact  and  conception,  unless 
there  shall  be  sent  from  God  a  man  with  the  gift 
of  sight.  The  Christian  world  is  waiting  for 
him :  it  may  have  to  wait  many  years ;  but  when 
the  fullness  of  the  time  shall  have  come,  he  will 
appear.  He  will  possess  the  equipment  of  learn- 
ing to  which  reference  has  been  made,  and  he  will 
sound  with  his  sympathies  the  great  heart  of  the 
present,  fathom  the  depths  of  its  spirit,  and  sur- 
prise the  world  with  new  revelations  of  the  eter- 
nal realities  of  Christian  faith. 

Until  this  great  man  shall  come,  little  men 
must  do  with  their  might  whatsoever  their  hands 
find  to  do.  Thankful  for  whatever  fraction  of 
the  ideal  equipment  in  learning  and  in  insight 
they  may  possess,  they  must  stand  to  the  task  of 
the  time  with  fidelity  and  hope.  More  good  will 
result  from  a  small  attempt  that  is  honest  than 
from  no  attempt  at  all.  The  intellectual  weari- 
ness that  bids  men  rest,  that  tells  them  that  the 
story  has  already  been  told  for  the  ten  thousandth 
time,  that  induces  indifference  by  the  remark 
that  if  told  again  no  one  will  listen  to  it,  is 
always  a  symptom  of  degeneration.  There  is 
reality,  infinite  reality,  in  the  universe,  food  for 
perpetual  wonder,  for  ever-advancing  discoveries 
and  ever-richer  communion.     While  the  universe 


34  INTRODUCTORY, 

remains  infinite,  and  while  the  Christian  religion 
continues  to  be  the  religion  of  the  Infinite,  all 
that  is  needed  for  the  surprise  and  zest  of  contin- 
uous discovery  is  the  pure  heart  and  the  single 
eye.  The  great  painting  requires  the  best  light : 
it  is  the  day  that  reveals  it ;  and  it  is  time,  trans- 
muted into  the  luminous  consciousness  of  the 
successive  generations  of  believers,  that  brings 
out  the  infinite  meaning  of  Christianity. 

VIII. 

The  foregoing  reflections  disclose  the  motive  of 
this  book.  We  find  ourselves  in  the  heart  of  a 
Christian  inheritance  of  overwhelming  wealth. 
It  is  the  task  of  this  as  of  every  generation  to 
ascertain  its  value,  and  to  use  its  full  dynamic 
resources.  To  understand  the  old  in  the  light  of 
the  new  is  the  most  difficult  and  at  the  same 
time  the  most  urgent  of  undertakings.  In  par- 
ticular, the  highest  conception  at  which  humanity 
has  arrived  is  the  conception  of  Christ ;  the  con- 
ception of  God  follows  that,  and  is  conditioned  by 
it.  We  can  never  transcend  it  any  more  than 
we  can  go  beyond  the  order  of  the  world.  We 
can  only  enter  into  a  generous  rivalry  in  the 
endeavor  to  fathom  its  infinite  significance  for 
mankind.  This  the  author  has  tried  to  do,  in 
such  form  as  the  limits  of  the  discussion  imposed. 
If  the  course  of  thought  shall  serve  in  any  mea- 
sure to  direct  the  minds  of  theological  students 


THE  CHRISTIAN  INHERITANCE.  35 

and  our  younger  ministers  to  the  wealth  of  con- 
tent in  the  Christ  fact  and  conception,  to  excite 
in  them  the  desire  to  explore  it  more  deeply,  and 
to  concentrate  many  different  intellects  upon  the 
most  remunerating  and  hopeful  of  all  studies,  the 
author  will  feel  that  the  publication  of  this  book 
is  more  than  justified. 

This  raises  the  question  concerning  the  class 
of  persons  for  whom  the  author  has  written.  The 
answer  must  be,  for  all  those  who  feel  the  great- 
ness of  the  common  Christian  inheritance,  and 
who  at  the  same  time  are  at  a  loss  to  understand 
its  meaning  for  the  generation  to  which  they  be- 
long. There  are  thousands  in  our  midst  who 
lone:  to  hear  the  wonderful  words  of  God  in  their 
own  tongue.  Into  the  dialect  of  present  thought 
the  meaning  of  the  Divine  Wonder  must  be  put. 
The  understanding,  burdened  with  the  sense  of 
the  infiniteness  of  the  Christian  message,  must 
cooperate  with  the  living  spirit.  For  the  most 
part,  then,  the  persons  addressed  in  this  discus- 
sion are  those  who  have  not  broken  with  historic 
Christianity,  who  stand  in  the  consciousness  of 
its  grandeur  and  finality,  but  who  desire  a  better 
understanding  of  that  which  holds  them  with  a 
grasp  so  beneficent.  If  any  of  my  Unitarian 
friends  should  read  what  I  have  written,  let  me 
here  make  plain  the  fact  that  I  am  not  trying  to 
raise  from  the  dead  a  deeply  and  decently  buried 
controversy.     It  is  the  duty  of  the  Unitarian,  as 


36  INTRODUCTORY. 

surely  as  it  is  mine,  to  endeavor  to  ascertain  the 
worth  of  our  common  Christian  inheritance ;  and 
if  upon  the  central  part  of  this  vast  bequest  — 
the  Person  of  Christ  —  we  differ  in  our  estimates, 
it  must  strengthen  him  in  his  own  conclusion  to 
see  it  victorious  against  mine.  Perhaps  this  con- 
sciousness of  the  duty  resting  upon  Unitarian  and 
Trinitarian  alike,  to  open  up  afresh  the  whole  ques- 
tion of  the  significance  of  Christianity,  may  sub- 
due both  from  the  mood  of  self-confident  contro- 
versialists to  the  temper  of  patient  and  reverent 
thinkers.  Any  words  of  mine  bearing  upon  Uni- 
tarianism  are  written,  I  trust  it  is  needless  to 
say,  in  honor  and  gratitude  for  the  great  move- 
ment of  thought  whose  power  for  good  has  been 
so  vast,  but  from  whose  conception  of  Christ  I 
differ.  Mutual  recognition  is  the  basis  of  all 
fruitful  discussion.  As  a  tenacious  Trinitarian,  I 
rejoice  to  recognize  the  benefit  to  the  Christian 
church  of  the  Unitarian  contention.  No  intelli- 
gent religious  person  can  fail  to  honor  its  insist- 
ence upon  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  the  real  and 
therefore  the  divine  humanity  of  our  Lord,  the 
function  of  history  as  a  revelation  of  God,  the 
place  of  the  Bible  at  the  centre  of  religious  his- 
tory, and  salvation  as  a  moral  process  under  the 
Spirit  of  God.  Against  a  Trinitarianism  that  was 
tritheism,  in  opposition  to  a  view  of  the  Person 
of  Christ  that  slighted  his  humanity  and  dishon- 
ored the  Eternal  Father,  in  the  face  of  opinions 


UNITARIAN  AND   TRINITARIAN.  37 

that  made  history  godless  and  terrible ;  that  con- 
strued salvation  as  outward,  forensic,  mechani- 
cal; that  regarded  religion  as  alien  to  the  nature 
of  man,  at  war  with  the  intellectual  and  moral 
wealth  of  the  world,  and  that  turned  it  into  a 
provincial  and  deformed  thing,  —  the  Unitarian 
protest  was  wholesome,  magnificent,  providential. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  ceaseless  assertion,  in  the 
face  of  militant  Unitarianism,  of  the  enlightened 
Trinitarian's  conception  of  God,  his  search  for 
the  basis  in  the  Infinite  for  human  society,  his 
construction  of  the  Person  of  Christ,  his  view  of 
the  differentiating  character  of  the  Bible  and  his- 
tory within  the  Christian  church,  his  persistent 
plea  for  the  meaning  of  an  outraged  conscience, 
his  appeal  for  an  authentic  and  authenticated 
Mediator  of  the  Eternal  Pity,  his  proclamation  of 
obedience  to  Christ  as  the  path  to  spiritual  free- 
dom, the  exalted  personalism  in  which  his  ideas 
have  lived,  and  the  contagious  enthusiasm  with 
which  he  has  expounded  them,  have  doubtless  told 
for  good  upon  his  stout  theological  antagonist, 
and  constitute  a  tradition  of  faith  of  the  utmost 
significance.  Whoever  enters  into  both  these 
moods,  whoever  studies  both  these  traditions,  if 
he  is  a  deep-hearted  man  and  alive  to  the  sub- 
lime reach  of  his  Christian  inheritance,  will  feel 
the  call  as  from  God,  whether  he  be  Unitarian 
or  Trinitarian  or  neither,  to  fathom  to  a  lower 
depth,  and  explore  on  a  wider  scale,  the  unsearch- 


38  INTB  OD  UCTOE  Y. 

able  riches  of  Christ.  To  such  a  man,  whatever 
his  name  or  order,  I  would  venture  to  repeat  the 
invitation  of  the  Hebrew  singer,  'burdened  as  it 
is  with  the  meaning,  the  privilege,  and  the  hope 
of  this  new  day :  — 

"  O  magnify  the  Lord  with  me, 
And  let  us  exalt  his  name  together !  "  ^ 

^  Psalm  xxxiv.  3. 


CHAPTER  II. 

CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 


ri  vfiiv  doK€7  irepl  rov  Xpicrrov.  —  Matt.  xxii.  42. 

"The  present  age  may  be  characterized  as  the  Age  of  Criti- 
cism, —  a  criticism  to  which  everything  is  obliged  to  submit. 
Religion  on  the  ground  of  its  sacredness,  and  Law  on  the 
groimd  of  its  majesty,  not  uncommonly  attempt  to  escape  this 
necessity.  But  by  such  efforts  they  inevitably  awaken  a  just 
suspicion  of  the  soundness  of  their  foundation,  and  they  lose  all 
their  claim  to  the  unfeigned  homage  paid  by  reason  to  that 
which  has  shown  itself  able  to  stand  the  test  of  free  inquiry." 
—  Kant,  quoted  in  Edward  Caird's  Critical  Philosophy,  vol.  i. 
p.l. 

"  Criticism  is  always  the  result  of  the  fact  that  the  intelli- 
gence has  found  its  way  blocked  by  some  difficulty,  which  has 
awakened  a  suspicion  against  the  universal  applicability  of  the 
categories  or  methods  which  it  has  been  using.  In  this  sense 
criticism  was  at  the  birth  of  science,  and  it  has  mediated  every 
transition  to  a  new  point  of  view.' '  —  Edward  Cairo's  Critical 
Philosophy,  vol.  i.  p.  42. 

"  The  most  distinctive  and  determinative  element  in  modem 
theology  is  what  we  may  term  a  new  feeling  for  Christ.  By 
this  feeling  its  specific  character  is  at  once  defined  and  ex- 
pressed. But  we  feel  him  more  in  our  theology  because  we 
know  bim  better  in  history."  —  A.  M.  Fairbaibn,  The  Place  of 
Christ  in  Modern  Theology,  p.  3. 

"  Christ  is  no  such  theophany,  no  such  casual,  unhistorical 
being,  as  the  Jehovah  angel  who  visited  Abraham.  He  is  in 
and  of  the  race,  born  of  a  woman,  living  in  the  line  of  human- 
ity, subject  to  human  conditions,  an  integral  part,  in  one  view, 
of  the  world's  history ;  only  bringing  into  it,  and  setting  in  or- 
ganific  union  with  it,  the  Eternal  Life."  —  Horace  Busknell, 
God  in  Christ,  p.  165. 


CHAPTER  II. 

CHKIST   IN   THE   FAITH   OF   TO-DAY. 

The  olcl-fasliionecl  officialism  of  the  Christian 
teacher  is  gone,  the  functional  authority  of  the 
priest  is  at  an  end,  the  mere  calling  of  the  pro- 
phet is  no  longer  a  passport  to  power.  The 
writer  who  in  these  days  appears  in  behalf  of  his 
Master  can  hope  to  prevail  only  through  the 
energy  of  his  ideas  and  the  nobility  of  his  pur- 
pose. The  Christian  teacher  has  lost  much,  but 
he  has  gained  infinitely  more.  This  gain  is  part 
of  a  universal  gain.  The  artistic  spirit  that 
moves  in  our  century,  and  that  irrresistibly  impels 
every  man  whose  calling  has  within  it  any  of  the 
higher  possibilities  to  establish  between  it  and 
his  spirit  a  sacred  relationship,  has  brought  into 
existence  a  nobler  purpose,  a  profounder  sincer- 
ity, a  larger  vitality,  and  a  certain  mystic  charm 
in  the  whole  business  of  living.  Here  and  there 
a  voice  grows  indignant  over  what  it  calls  the 
preaching  of  the  age;  but  the  truth  is,  in  the 
characteristic  literature  of  our  time,  preaching  is 
universal,  that  is,  all  the  higher  forms  of  intellec- 
tual activity  are  carried  forward  with  supreme 
reference  to  human  welfare.     The  typical  man 


42        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

to-day  glories  in  liis  vocation,  strives  to  subdue 
it  to  tlie  higher   necessities  of   his  life,  toils  to 
get  from  it  food  for  his  heart  no  less  than  for 
his  body,  works  over  it  that  he  may  raise  it  into 
a  large  and  beautiful  utterance  of  his  humanity. 
This  modern  emphasis  upon  the  vocation  of  man 
is  but  the  note  of  the  artistic  spirit  under  the 
inspiration  of  moral  good.     In   all  our  typical 
thinking,  the  ethical   good  is  the  goal,  and  the 
intellectual  enterprises  characteristic  of  our  time 
are  adjusted  to  this  with  as  much  precision  as  the 
telescope  to  the   star.     In   consequence   of   this 
new  mood,  philosophy  has  become  the  reasoned 
expression   of   the   philosopher's  life,   and   "the 
quarrel  of    long    standing   between    poetry  and 
philosophy  "  bids  fair  to  issue  in  complete  recon- 
ciliation.    Science,  too,  is  becoming  more  human 
every  day.     She  is  the  vocation  of  certain  master 
spirits,  and  by  the  purity  of  their  devotion,  and 
the  forms  she  is  made  to  assume  in  their  hands, 
she  becomes  a  fine  art.     Science  is  invested  with 
new  charm  because  her  version  of  fact  bears  so 
powerfully  upon  human  society.     In  justification 
of  this  remark,   reference  may  be  made  to  the 
scientific  literature  of  the  century.      "The  Origin 
of  Species"  is  quickly  followed  by  "The  Descent 
of  Man."     Evolution,  as  a  generalization  from 
the  facts  of  nature,  soon  appears  as  the  source  of 
a  new  history  of  mankind.     Evolutional  science 
stands  distinguished  for  its  human  interest  and 


THE  WITNESS  OF  SCIENCE.  43 

its  prophetic  power.     Scientific  books,  of  the  in- 
fluential class,  have  been  constructed  very  much 
upon  the  pattern  of  the  old-fashioned  theological 
sermon,  —  first  the  doctrinal  part,  and  then  the 
practical ;  first  the  intellectual  principle,  and  then 
the  aj^plication :  and  as  with  the  sermon,  so  with 
the  scientific  treatise,  the  discussion  was  under- 
taken and  carried  forward  for  the  sake  of  the 
moral   or   immoral   lesson.     Even  the  supposed 
inhuman  science  of  political  economy  is  no  ex- 
ception.     As  Prof essor  Marshall  says :  "Ethical 
forces  are  among  those  of  which  the   economist 
has  to  take  account.     Attempts  have  indeed  been 
made  to  construct  an  abstract  science  with  regard 
to  the  actions  of  an  '  economic  man  '  who  is  under 
no  ethical  influences,  and  who  pursues  pecuniary 
gain  warily  and  energetically,  but  mechanically 
and  selfishly.     But  they  have  never  been  success- 
ful.    No  one  could  be  relied  on  better  than  the 
economic  man  to  endure  toil  and  sacrifice  with 
the  unselfish  desire  to  make   provision   for   his 
family ;  and  his  normal  motives  harv^e  always  been 
tacitly  assumed  to  include  the  family  affections. 
But  if  these  motives  are  included,  why  not  also 
all  other  altruistic  motives,  the  action  of  which  is 
so  far  uniform   in  any  class,    at  any  time  and 
place,  that  it  can  be  reduced  to  general  rule?"^ 
In  a  word,  life  is  the  great  finality  in  our  cen- 
tury, and  out  of  its  perplexities  and  possibilities 

1  Principles  of  Political  Economy.    Preface  to  first  edition,  p.  x. 


44        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

all  tlie  higher  forms  of  rational  activity  have 
grown,  and  to  it  they  return  for  judgment.^ 
Thus  the  artistic  spirit,  which  is  essentially  a 
preaching  spirit,  is  going  from  strength  unto 
strength.  The  typical  thinkers  are  everywhere 
doing  their  work  in  veneration  of  human  life, 
and  their  highest  hope  is  fixed  upon  a  beneficent 
ministry  to  mankind. 

Bereaved,  or  rather  let  it  be  said  mercifully 
relieved,  of  all  the  officialism  of  his  profession, 

^  This  characteristic  of  the  greater  literary  activity  of  the 
century,  what  Matthew  Arnold  would  call  its  high  seriousness, 
is  self-evident.  The  most  artistic  of  all  Victorian  poets  —  Ten- 
nyson—  draws  his  inspiration  from  life,  and  the  distinct,  pre- 
meditated end  of  his  art  is  a  beautiful  ministry  to  life.  How- 
ever the  literary  fraternity  may  dislike  the  statement  or  resent 
the  imputation,  the  fact  remains,  that  all  great  poetry  is  great 
preaching.  It  is  illumination  and  inspiration  for  man  in  his  hu- 
man relations.  What  differentiates  the  literary  movement  that 
began  with  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  from  the  superficial  and  worth- 
less critical  work  that  immediately  preceded  it,  is  its  ethical 
insight  and  purpose.  To  these  two  writers  we  are  indebted  more 
than  to  all  others,  for  carrying  into  literature  the  ethical  im- 
pulse, and  for  measuring  the  productions  of  genius  by  ethical 
standards.  Matthew  Arnold  was  nothing  more  or  less  than  a 
gifted  commentator  upon  literature,  an  admirable  preacher,  who 
took  his  texts  from  unconventional  quarters.  The  same  remark 
applies  to  Ruskin,  and  indeed  to  all  the  greater  spirits  in  the 
characteristic  literary  movement  of  the  century.  The  pith  of  it 
all  is  the  preaching  of  righteousness,  the  ajiplication  of  noble 
ideas  to  life.  At  present  a  new  school  has  risen  that  knows  not 
Joseph,  and  its  life  is  likely  to  resemble  that  of  Pharaoh  under 
the  plagues,  and  the  waves  of  the  Red  Sea.  Meanwhile,  innocent 
Egypt  must  suffer  from  Ibsen  and  his  set,  and  poor  Israel  face  a 
new  oppressor. 


VOCATION  AND    LIFE.  45 

the  Christian  teacher  glories  in  his  vocation.  It 
is  to  him  what  the  flute  or  harp  was  to  the  wan- 
dering minstrel  in  ancient  times,  —  a  thing  insep- 
arable from  his  being,  his  sweet  companion  in 
hours  of  solitude,  the  instrument  through  which 
he  poured  gladness  into  the  hearts  of  the  poor 
and  sorrowing,  revealed  the  privilege  and  in- 
formed the  zest  of  happier  existence,  and  set 
forth  the  whole  sublime  mystery  of  man's  strug- 
gle in  this  world ;  the  voice,  too,  that  carried  his 
own  thought  and  feeling  into  the  presence  of  the 
Infinite.  This  new  relation  of  calling  to  life,  in 
the  case  of  the  Christian  teacher,  must  raise  the 
deepest  questions.  There  will  be  the  vital  sub- 
jective question  of  purpose,  ambition,  sincerity, 
intensity,  —  the  question  that  demands  Za>  certain 
prophetic  nobility  in  the  attitude  and  tone  of  the 
soul.  Then  will  come  the  great  objective  ques- 
tion as  to  the  truth  to  be  taught,  the  ideas  to  be 
communicated,  the  place  that  Christ  occupies  in 
the  faith  of  the  teacher,  and  the  place  that  he 
should  occupy  in  the  faith  of  the  time. 

There  is,  we  are  told,  a  Christ  of  yesterday,  a 
Christ  of  to-day,  and  a  Christ  of  the  endless 
future.  Through  these  three  grand  divisions  of 
time,  men  look  up  and  behold  the  unchanging 
countenance  of  the  Christ  of  God.  Still  perma- 
nence does  not  mean  monotony,  and  therefore 
the  Christ  of  to-day  must  have  the  deepest  inter- 
est for  the  men  of  to-day.     The  Eternal  takes  on 


46        CHRIST  m  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

new  meaning  for  mankind  as  it  looks  tlirough  tke 
sum-total  of  the  conditions  amid  which  men  are 
actually  living.  While  one  glories  in  the  Christ 
of  history,  and  lifts  one's  self  to  greet  the  Christ 
of  the  future,  it  is  one's  special  privilege  to  be- 
hold Christ  in  the  struggles  and  hopes  of  this 
generation.  The  subject  of  this  book  is  the  eter- 
nal Christ  as  the  Christ  of  to-day,  and  in  the 
present  chapter  we  are  to  consider  him  as  he 
stands  in  the  faith  of  our  time. 

I. 

It  is  a  vast  comfort  to  remember  that  Christ  is 
already  here,  that  his  energy  is  at  work  upon  the 
life  of  the  world.  The  largest  hopefulness  may 
nourish  itself  upon  the  great  utterance  of  the 
apostle :  "He  was  in  the  world,  and  the  world  was 
made  by  him,  and  the  world  knew  him  not."^ 
The  divine  order  of  the  world  is  here  from  the 
morning  of  creation ;  it  waits  for  the  recognition 
of  mankind ;  and,  although  embarrassed  by  human 
ignorance,  it  is  still  doing  its  work.  Nothing  is 
truer  than  that  life  ever  goes  before,  and  is  ever 
greater  than,  the  comprehending  intellect.  The 
outward  world  has  done  a  quite  infinite  work  for 
the  individual  mind  before  it  occurs  to  it  to  ask 
about  its  reality.  Color  and  form  are  present 
from  the  beginning,  bewitching  the  eye  and  giving 
radiance  to  feeling ;  the  forces  and  the  melodies  of 

1  John  i.  10. 


EDUCATION    THROUGH   NATURE.  47 

nature  do  their  best  work  while  the  young  soul  is 
alive  with  receptivity  and  the  ear  is  in  devout 
self -surrender.  The  music  of  the  running  brook, 
the  freshness  of  the  meadow,  the  solemn  expanse 
of  lake  and  sea,  the  gloom  and  grandeur  of  valley 
and  mountain,  the  ineffable  outgoings  of  morning 
and  evening,  the  sublime  procession  of  the  stars, 
reach  the  heart  from  the  first,  form  the  intellect 
from  its  earliest  awakening,  carry  into  the  mental 
life  from  its  birth  an  atmosphere,  a  color,  and 
tone  and  power  that  defy  analysis.  The  fibres 
of  man's  being  grow  finer  and  less  perceptible  as 
they  leave  the  centres  behind;  and  they  reach 
out  to  infinity,  ramify  among  the  deepest  myste- 
ries of  the  universe,  and  entwine  themselves  with 
the  God  who  speaks  to  him  both  from  without 
and  from  within.  The  world,  the  outward  world, 
is  an  incalculable  power  upon  life,  —  physical, 
aesthetic,  intellectual,  —  long  before  it  becomes 
a  problem  to  the  reason.  Because  of  its  prior 
standing  in  life,  in  virtue  of  the  rich  human  in- 
terests that  subsist  upon  its  bounty  and  that 
refresh  themselves  from  its  beauty,  the  outward 
world  becomes  a  living  question  for  the  scientific 
intellect.  In  the  same  way  Christ  comes  before 
the  minds  of  men  to-day.  There  was  possible, 
at  one  time,  an  outside  opinion  of  Christ.  Whom 
do  men  say  that  I  am?  Jesus  was  interested  in 
the  merely  speculative  opinion  concerning  him 
among  the  leaders  of  thought  in  his  generation. 


48        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

Of  course  he  regarded,  as  every  one  must,  all 
merely  outside  notions  as  worthless,  except  for 
their  human  interest.  When  Jesus  turned  and 
said  to  his  disciples.  But  whom  say  ye  that  I  am  ? 
he  appealed  from  the  mere  intellect  to  the  intel- 
lect operating  upon  a  basis  of  life,  —  from  the 
understanding  working  upon  an  object  outside 
the  circle  of  its  interests  and  loves  to  a  mind  in 
the  ranges  of  whose  intuition  the  material  for  an 
adequate  judgment  was  already  present.  It  was 
because  of  his  prior  standing  in  the  life  of  his 
discij)les  that  Jesus  expected  from  them  an  ap- 
proximately adequate  judgment  about  himself. 

Now  this  is  of  course  infinitely  more  the  char- 
acter of  our  time.  For  nearly  two  thousand 
years  Christ  has  had  standing  in  the  life  of  the 
race.  The  stream  of  his  thought  has  been  en- 
riching all  the  centuries ;  the  sound  of  his  voice 
has  never  died  away;  the  ideals  that  he  embod- 
ied have  been  the  guiding  star  of  our  higher 
civilization;  his  example  has  been  the  alluring 
and  unforgetable  picture  hung  in  the  memory 
and  sympathy  of  all  the  great  religious  leaders 
since  he  lived,  and  his  spirit  has  been  unceasingly 
at  work  upon  humanity.  Instinct,  habit  moral 
and  intellectual,  custom  and  law,  institution  do- 
mestic, civic,  and  religious,  the  whole  sweep  of 
our  civilization,  has  been  played  upon,  awakened, 
and  informed,  wrought  over  from  its  first  estate, 
and,  in  spite  of  continuous  and  brutal  resistance, 


CHEIST   IN    THE    EPISTLES.  49 

charged  with  tlie  power  of  Christ.  To  abstract 
Christ  from  our  civilization  woukl  be  to  take 
the  sun  out  of  the  heavens,  the  soul  out  of  the 
body.  What  we  should  have  left  would  be  a 
frozen  humanity,  a  dead  symbol  with  the  reality 
forever  gone.  I  repeat,  therefore,  that  it  is  be- 
cause of  the  prior  and  mighty  standing  which 
Christ  has  in  the  life  of  the  world  that  he  be- 
comes for  each  new  generation  a  problem  for  the 
reason. 

The  wonderful  thing  about  the  letters  which 
compose  so  large  a  part  of  the  New  Testament 
is  the  overwhelming  consciousness  of  Christ  that 
one  finds  in  them.  The  writers  are  flooded  with 
Christ.  Their  thoughts  spontaneous  and  deliber- 
ate, their  beliefs  old  and  new,  their  ideals  and 
enthusiasms,  their  uplook  into  heaven  and  their 
outlook  upon  the  earth,  are  but  different  versions 
of  the  dominating  soul  of  their  Master.  The 
whole  movement  of  their  existence  is  penetrated 
by  his  presence.  It  is  as  if  some  great  river  had 
been  touched  in  all  its  fountains,  and  sweetened 
in  all  its  tributaries  by  a  perfume  from  heaven, 
so  that  henceforth  the  volume  of  its  waters  is  but 
the  moving  body  of  that  mighty,  fragrant  spirit. 
The  stream  of  the  apostolic  consciousness  is  thus 
filled  and  transformed  by  Christ.  These  men 
are  believers  in  God,  but  they  are  believers  in 
God  through  Christ;  they  preach  the  love  of 
God  to  the  nations,  but  it  is  the  love  of  God  in 


50        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

Christ;  they  look  for  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness,  but  it  is 
the  righteousness  of  God  in  Christ.  The  New 
Testament  writers  are  in  captivity  to  their  Lord; 
they  are  his  bond-servants;  his  empire  over  them 
is  something  amazing,  and  without  a  parallel  in 
human  history.  Through  these  writers  we  behold 
an  entire  generation  in  the  rapture  of  a  great 
love.  These  multitudinous  lovers  can  think  of 
nothing,  can  talk  of  nothing,  can  dream  of  no- 
thing, except  in  the  line  of  their  sublime  and 
devouring  passion.  Out  of  that  mood  came  the 
thought  of  the  ascendency,  the  divinity,  the  essen- 
tial deity,  of  their  Master.  The  apostolic  faith 
in  the  deity  of  Christ  was  an  outgrowth  of  his 
sovereignty  over  apostolic  life. 

More  wonderful  still  is  the  fact  that  our  whole 
Western  civilization  is  under  the  spell  of  the  same 
Presence.  Not  indeed  so  intensely,  nor  so  nobly, 
but  yet  as  truly,  as  in  the  apostolic  age,  is  our 
entire  Western  civilization  under  the  dominating 
consciousness  of  Christ.  I  venture  the  statement 
that  it  is  almost  as  impossible  to  think  of  God 
and  man  and  human  society,  through  any  other 
medium  than  Christ,  as  it  is  to  look  up  at  the 
stars,  or  abroad  uj)on  the  earth,  in  any  other  way 
than  through  the  world's  enfolding  atmosphere. 
Our  whole  thought  of  God  and  man;  our  entire 
working  philosophy  of  life ;  our  modes  of  intellec- 
tual vision,  types  of  feeling,  habits  of  will;  our 


CHRIST   IN    OUR  CIVILIZATION,  51 

instinctive,  customary,  rational,  emotional,  insti- 
tutional, and  social  existence,  —  is  everywhere 
encompassed  and  interpenetrated  by  Christ.  His 
empire  over  our  civilization  is  complete  in  this 
sense,  that  it  exists  and  expands  only  under  his 
j)ower,  and  cannot  define  or  describe  itself  except 
in  terms  of  his  teaching  and  character.  We  are 
here  under  the  shadow  of  an  Infinite  Name;  we 
are  living  and  dying  in  the  heart  of  an  enfolding 
Presence.  We  are  compelled  to  acknowledge  that 
the  secret  moulding  energy  of  our  entire  civiliza- 
tion is  the  mind  of  Christ.  It  is  out  of  this  con- 
sciousness of  the  indwelling,  wide-spreading,  and 
overruling  mind  of  Christ  that  the  belief  comes 
in  his  essential  deit3^  The  sign  of  his  supre- 
macy is  everywhere.  When  our  Western  world 
thinks  of  infanthood  and  motherhood,  it  still  be- 
holds him  in  the  arms  of  Mary.  When  men  look 
upon  the  loveliness  of  childhood,  they  are  under 
the  spell  of  his  words,  "Suffer  the  little  children, 
and  forbid  them  not  to  come  unto  me:  for  of 
such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven."^  When  they 
rejoice  in  the  glory  of  youth,  they  behold  again 
Jesus  fixing  his  divine  look  upon  the  young  ruler, 
and  pouring  over  him  the  tides  of  a  consecrating 
love ;  when  they  go  to  the  wedding,  the  marriage 
feast  at  Cana  of  Galilee  is  before  them;  when 
they  walk  to  the  house  of  sorrow,  they  are  under 
his  shadow  who  comforted  the  mourners  in  Beth- 

^       1  Matt.  xix.  14. 


52        CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

any,  and  who  opened  the  grave  of  Lazarus ;  when 
they  revere  and  trust  God,  it  is  his  God  whom 
they  revere  and  trust;  when  they  strive  to  bring 
in  a  better  day  for  hiunanity,  it  is  his  kingdom 
that  they  seek;  when  they  hate  sin,  it  is  the  vital 
denial  of  the  Highest  that  he  showed  to  be  so 
fearful ;  when  they  abhor  hypocrisy,  the  image  in 
their  thoughts  is  that  of  the  Pharisee  whom  his 
scorn  transfixed;  when  they  loathe  treachery,  it 
is  Judas  Iscariot  of  whom  they  think;  when  they 
speak  of  the  moral  order  of  the  universe,  and  the 
recompense  of  the  just  and  the  unjust,  it  is  the 
heaven  and  the  hell  of  his  teaching  that  mankind 
have  in  mind.  The  whole  noble  movement  of 
Western  civilization  and  the  entire  mass  of  its 
baseness  have  upon  them  the  mark  of  the  Lord. 
The  truth  of  life  is  his  truth,  and  its  convention- 
alities, respectabilities,  shams  and  hypocrisies, 
disguise  themselves  in  the  lustre  of  his  words. 
The  total  Western  world  is  under  his  sovereignty. 
When  the  sun  is  descending  clear  and  with  un- 
shorn glory,  and  one  looks  fixedly  upon  the  flam- 
ing orb  for  even  a  few  moments,  after  one  has 
turned  away  the  image  remains,  and,  upon  what- 
ever object  the  eyes  rest,  one  still  beholds  the  per- 
sistent form  of  the  great  sun.  Christ  has  once 
for  all  fixed  the  attention  of  the  world  upon  him- 
self, and  henceforth  it  can  never  get  his  divine 
form  out  of  its  vision.  He  is  imprinted  forever 
upon  the  mental  retina  of  the  race,  and  one  must 


THE   ETHICAL    CHRIST  53 

continue  to  look  upon  the  soul,  and  human  so- 
ciety, and.  God  himself,  with  eyes  that  have  Christ 
burned  into  their  substance.  A  fact  like  this 
wields  an  elemental  power  over  the  conceptions 
that  Christian  thinkers  frame  as  to  the  dignity  of 
their  Master.  Christology  is  not  born  of  imagi- 
nation: it  is  a  serious  attempt  to  give  adequate 
explanation  to  an  indisputable  fact.  Account 
for  this  omnipresent  Christ,  for  this  name  that 
conditions  our  civilization,  for  this  life  that  our 
world  cannot  transcend,  apart  from  his  deity, 
believers  in  him  feel  that  they  cannot. 

II. 

One  great  tendency  of  the  time,  even  among 
those  who  have  not  broken  with  the  past,  and 
who  are  in  the  line  of  historic  discipleship,  is  to 
rest  in  an  ethical  Christ,  asking  no  questions  of 
a  metaphysical  nature,  and  in  fact  denying  their 
pertinence  and  importance.  The  ethical  passion 
of  the  Ritschlian  school  in  Germany  gives  it  a 
vast  power  over  the  young  soul  in  its  glowing, 
impatient  initial  Christian  experienc^  It  comes 
in  the  name  of  what  is  felt,  and  it  brushes  aside 
as  irrelevant  a  host  of  things  that  seem  full  of 
hard  problems  for  the  student.  One  must  sym- 
pathize to  a  considerable  extent  with  this  move- 
ment on  its  native  soil.  When  on  the  one  hand 
speculation  has  become,  what  it  is  so  apt  to 
become  in  Germany,  extreme  and  almost  a  disease, 


54        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-BAY. 

and  when  on  tlie  other  traditional  orthodoxy  has 
become  incredible,  a  return  to  experience  and  the 
Christ  of  the  heart,  such  as  the  modern  Ritsch- 
lians  represent,  must  be  wholesome  and  indeed 
providential.  But  it  may  be  all  this  and  yet  be 
far  enough  from  adequacy.  Among  ourselves, 
whether  for  better  or  for  worse,  the  same  ten- 
dency is  growing.  In  the  minds  of  the  younger 
men,  one  finds  metaphysical  infirmity  and  agnos- 
ticism joined  with  the  sincerest  homage  in  the 
presence  of  Jesus.  £]The  purely  ethical  apprehen- 
sion of  Christ  is  coming  to  be  the  fashion,  the 
moral  picture  of  him  in  the  Gosj)els,  the  image 
of  him  in  feeling  and  in  social  reform,  while 
across  the  sunless  wastes  of  thought  no  shadow  of 
him  can  be  discovered.  CThe  Holy  Spirit  is  as- 
sumed to  have  to  do  only  with  the  needs  of  the 
heart;  revelation  is  conceived  to  be  of  eternal 
life ;  and  dogma  is  but  the  product  of  the  human 
understanding,  giving,  and  giving  necessarily,  an 
intellectual  form  to  its  spiritual  lifeL  This  type 
of  opinion,  wherever  it  appears,  rejoices  in  the 
ethical  element  in  the  Gospels  ;  is  fond  of  con- 
trasting primitive  Christianity  with  that  developed 
in  the  course  of  the  centuries;  hints  or  declares, 
according  to  the  temperament  and  environment 
of  the  writer,  that  the  evolution  in  creed  is  but 
an  alien  accretion;  and  announces  that  the  origi- 
nal divine  message  was  of  a  transcendent  ethical 
Personality  founding  a  kingdom  through  the  in- 


OBJECTION    TO    DOGMA.  55 

fluence  of  life  rather  tlian  tlie  power  of  ideas, 
A  distinction  is  made,  and  insisted  upon  as  funda- 
mental, between  moral  Cliristology  and  metaphy- 
sical, and  it  is  implied  or  contended,  as  the  case 
may  be,  that  there  is  no  material  in  the  trust- 
worthy evangelical  narrative  for  a  metaphysical 
construction  of  the  person  of  Jesus.  In  the 
strong  words  of  a  recent  writer,  it  is  held  that 
"it  is  impossible  for  any  one,  whether  he  be  a 
student  of  history  or  no,  to  fail  to  notice  a  differ- 
ence of  both  form  and  content  between  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount  and  the  Nicene  Creed.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  the  promulgation  of  a 
new  law  of  conduct;  it  assumes  beliefs  rather 
than  formulates  them;  the  theological  conceptions 
which  underlie  it  belong  to  the  ethical  rather 
than  the  speculative  side  of  theolog}^;  metaphy- 
sics are  wholly  absent.  The  Nicene  Creed  is  a 
statement  partly  of  historical  facts,  and  partly  of 
dogmatic  inferences ;  the  metaphysical  terms  which 
it  contains  would  probably  have  been  unintelligi- 
ble to  the  first  disciples ;  ethics  have  no  place  in 
it.  The  one  belongs  to  a  world  of  Syrian  peas- 
ants, the  other  to  a  world  of  Greek  philoso- 
phers." ^  One  could  not  wish  for  a  franker  state- 
ment of  the  supposed  antithesis  between  moral 
and  metaphysical  Christianity.  The  quotation  is 
made,  not  for  the  purpose  of  refuting  the  gener- 
alization of  Dr.  Hatch,  but  for  the  sake  of  defin- 

1  Dr.  Hatch,  The  Ilibbert  Lectures,  1888,  p.  1. 


56        CHBIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

ing  the  class  to  whom  reference  is  made.  In  tlie 
statement  of  the  Hibbert  lecturer  there  is  a 
breadth  and  power  that  make  it  representative. 
There  is  abundant  room  for  an  answer  in  detail 
to  a  series  of  remarks  so  sweeping,  considered  as 
the  utterance  of  an  individual  scholar;  but  it  is 
more  in  accordance  with  the  purpose  of  this  dis- 
cussion to  regard  them  in  their  representative 
character. 

There  are  various  reasons  why  this  view  should 
be  popular.  In  the  first  place,  its  great  and  just 
emphasis  upon  eternal  life  as  the  final  thing 
in  the  gospel  message,  and  the  supreme  thing 
in  the  religious  spirit,  must  exercise  a  j)owerful 
attraction.  There  is  a  vast  positive  here,  around 
which  all  believers  will  willingly  assemble,  as 
men  gather  about  a  great  fire  in  midwinter.  In 
the  second  place,  it  is  an  easy  view.  It  puts  no 
problem  before  the  Christian  intellect  of  an  over- 
mastering kind.  It  excommunicates  philosophy 
from  the  household  of  faith,  and  sometimes,  as 
in  the  Ritschlian  metaphysics,  calls  it  in  to  dis- 
credit metaphysics,  undertakes  to  make  philo- 
sophical theology  commit  suicide.  Then,  again, 
to  reject  the  grand  historic  construction  of  the 
Person  of  Christ,  and  to  rest  in  a  metaphysical 
negative  regarding  him,  serves  as  a  cover  for  the 
real  opinion  that  one  may  not  have  the  courage 
to  avow.  The  New  Testament  is  treated  with 
the  boldest  freedom  by  modern  methods  of  inter- 


THE    CHRIST    OF   NATUBALISM.  57 

pretation,  and  students  in  these  days  feel  that 
it  is  very  difficult  indeed  to  make  out  just  how 
far  the  supernatural  in  the  way  of  the  miracu- 
lous enters  into  the  genuine  evangelical  narrative. 
Further,  a  certain  skeptical  mood  reigns  with  ref- 
erence to  all  so-called  interruptions  of  the  law  of 
uniformity.  The  miraculous  is  quietly  ruled  out, 
or  left  to  fall  from  the  tree  of  faith  like  a  dead 
leaf:  the  ethical  alone  is  real  and  imperishable; 
all  else  is  but  the  legendary  dress  of  the  hour.^ 

Now  all  this  seems  to  me  but  a  passing  phase 
of  religious  thought,  a  sign  of  intellectual  imcer- 
tainty  and  immaturity,  an  evidence  of  the  lack 
of  thoroughness  upon  a  fundamental  problem  of 
Christian  faith.  If  indeed  the  ethical  Christ  is 
held  to  give  us  the  metaphysical,  if  the  apprehen- 
sion of  Christ  through  moral  feeling  is  but  the 
method  of  reaching  his  true  character,  his  ulti- 
mate and  universal  importance,  his  final  relation 

^  The  converg'ence  upon  the  ethical  Christ  from  quarters  the 
most  opposite  is  one  of  the  most  interesting-  studies  of  to-day. 
The  naturalistic  writer,  Pfleiderer,  rests  in  the  moral  Christ ; 
the  Ritschlian  does  the  same  ;  while  philosopliical  writers  like 
Edward  Caird  move  toward  a  similar  goal.  The  idealism 
that  works  through  the  established  order  of  nature,  and  that 
abhors  the  idea  of  the  transcendence  of  nature  implied  in  mi- 
racle ;  the  school  of  feeling,  and  the  dynamics  of  life,  and  that 
detests  the  presence  of  metaphysics  in  religion  as  that  of  an 
alien ;  and  the  professional  Hegelian  metaphysician,  give  one 
substantially  the  same  Christ.  They  emphasize  the  character, 
and  leave  the  subject  of  it  an  enigma,  or  reduce  him  wholly  to 
the  human  category. 


58        CHBIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

to  God  and  to  man,  it  is  something  deserving  the 
profoundest  respect.  The  ethical  method  is  the 
way  to  the  heart  of  Christ,  the  way  to  the  heart 
of  the  universe.  But,  in  this  sense  of  the  term, 
the  ethical  reaches  and  holds  within  it  the  ulti- 
mate reality;  while  the  form  of  opinion  which 
seems  to  me  superficial  is  that  which  substitutes 
the  Christ  of  feeling  for  the  Christ  of  truth.  It 
must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  word  Ethical "  is 
a  term  of  character  and  not  of  being;  that  it  is 
descriptive  of  quality  and  not  of  the  reality;  that 
it  calls  attention  to  the  inner  habit  and  the  out- 
ward conduct,  while  it  leaves  undefined  the  per- 
sonal soul  that  is  the  living  source  of  all.  The 
moral  attributes  of  Christ  may  be,  as  I  thor- 
oughly believe  they  are,  the  only  open  path  to  a 
true  appreciation  of  his  nature;  but  it  must  be 
affirmed  that  Christ  is  something  more  than  his 
exalted  ethical  character.  There  is  a  personal 
centre  and  source  of  the  thought,  and  the  feeling, 
and  the  purpose,  and  the  acts  that  reveal  him: 
that  personal  living  centre  is  the  ultimate  and 
real  Christ;  and  that  ultimate  and  real  Christ 
may  be  measured  against  God  and  against  man, 
and  his  place  in  relation  to  both  approximately 
ascertained.  It  is  impossible  to  account  for  char- 
acter in  any  human  being  without  the  assumption 
of  a  personal  spirit  whose  character  it  is.  Char- 
acter must  be  the  character  of  some  one;  and 
Christ  is  not  merely  an  exalted  ethical  habit,  but 


CHARACTER   AND    PERSONALITY.  59 

a  being  to  whom  that  exalted  ethical  habit  belongs. 
The  classic  illustration  of  Alice  in  Wonderland 
must  here  be  repeated.  A  cat  without  a  grin  one 
can  conceive,  but  a  grin  without  a  cat  is  impos- 
sible. A  personal  being  without  exalted  ethical 
habit  is  possible  enough,  but  an  exalted  ethical 
habit  without  a  personal  being  as  the  source  of  it 
is  unthinkable.  Wherever  one  sees  a  smile,  one 
finds  a  face  wearing  it ;  and  wherever  one  discov- 
ers character,  one  beholds  a  personal  being  bear- 
ing it.  For  ethics  without  metaphysics  it  is  diffi= 
cult  to  have  any  real  respect.  Here  are  the  com- 
mon relations  of  mankind,  —  husband  and  wife, 
parent  and  child,  citizen  and  man.  Plere  are 
personal  beings  in  a  certain  order  of  relationship. 
The  ethics  of  humanity  are  the  outcome  of  the 
metaphysics  of  humanity;  the  moral,  habits  and 
acts  of  the  race  have  their  source  in  the  moral 
being  of  the  race.  The  ethical  character  of  Christ, 
the  ethical  character  of  God,  implies  the  personal 
reality  of  Christ,  the  personal  reality  of  God. 
Beneath  the  sublime  phenomenon  of  moral  worth 
in  all  its  forms  there  is  being;  and  the  promise 
whose  perpetual  fulfillment  is  the  support  of  the 
moral  order  of  the  world  is  the  old  one,  "the  Eter- 
nal God  is  thy  refuge,  and  underneath  thee  are 
the  everlasting  arms."^  One  can  sooner  build  a 
house  without  foundations,  lay  railroad  tracks  in 
the  air,  or  enable  the  ocean  to  dispense  with  its 

^  Deut.  xxxiii.  27. 


60        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

bed  in  the  heart  of  the  earth,  than  to  erect  an  en- 
during ethical  scheme  of  humanity  apart  from  the 
reality  of  God  and  the  personal  soul  of  the  indi- 
vidual man.  Feeling  viewed  as  the  foundation  of 
thought  is  great;  considered  as  the  raw  material 
of  rational  life,  the  intuition  that  gives  the  very 
impact  upon  the  heart  of  the  supreme  spiritual 
Presence,  it  is  to  be  regarded  with  veneration. 
There  are  no  words  sufficient  to  celebrate  its 
praise.  Men  are  allowed  to  have  these  unsounded 
depths  where  God  is  evermore  at  work,  and  it  is 
permissible,  and  indeed  necessary,  to  appeal  to 
the  unfathomable  life  which  is  the  gift  of  God. 
But  feeling  used  as  a  substitute  for  reason  is  one 
of  the  least  worthy  of  things.  It  is  giving  a  stone 
for  bread,  a  scorpion  for  an  egg.  For  what  is 
the  use  of  feeling  when  its  rational  value  is  no 
longer  ascertainable?  The  worst  sort  of  subjec- 
tivity, the  hopeless  circle  of  the  log  in  the  whirl- 
pool, is  involved  in  the  easy  substitution  of  the 
merely  ethical  Christ  for  the  Christ  both  ethical 
and  real. 

The  greatest  objection,  however,  to  this  entire 
mode  of  thought  is,  that  it  puts  asunder  what  God 
has  joined  together,  —  life  and  philosophy.  Its 
assumption,  conscious  or  unconscious,  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  is  not  concerned  in  the  development 
of  theological  thought,  nor  manifest  in  the  intel- 
lectual evolution  of  mankind,  is  the  superlative 
heresy  of  our  generation.     The  easy  way  in  which 


CHRIST    THE    TEACHER.  61 

it  is  taken  for  granted  that  life  yields  the  imme- 
diate and  perfect  intuition  of  God,  and  that  the 
interpretations,  the  rational  constructions,  of  this 
life  are  wholly  of  man's  device,  is  extraordinary. 
Eor  the  Divine  Spirit  must  be  concerned  with 
the  sum  of  human  interests,  he  must  be  in  the 
whole  activity  of  man ;  otherwise  the  conclusion 
is  inevitable  that  humanity  is  utterly  destitute  of 
his  presence.  The  distinction  between  religion 
and  theology,  between  the  forces  of  the  spiritual 
life  and  the  operations  and  results  of  reflective 
thought,  is  valid ;  but  the  inference  from  this  dif- 
ference, that  the  God  who  is  the  helper  of  the 
heart  in  its  distress  is  not  also  the  guide  of  the 
intellect  in  its  perplexities,  is  unwarrantable. 
The  serious  and  noble  life  of  the  world,  both  on 
its  rational  and  on  its  moral  sides,  is  the  product, 
through  imperfect  human  personalities,  of  the 
Eternal  Spirit.  Thought  is  as  sovereign  in  Christ 
as  feeling,  the  prophetic  office  as  the  priestly. 
Indeed,  the  best  single  characterization  of  Jesus 
would  be  the  teacher.  Everything  depends  upon 
the  validity  of  his  thought  of  God,  his  conception 
of  the  soul,  his  ideal  for  human  society,  his  vision 
of  a  universe  passionately  sympathetic  toward 
man  in  his  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness. 
The  metaphysics  of  Jesus  are  absolutely  essential 
to  his  ethics ;  his  characterization  of  the  ultimate 
realities  in  heaven  and  in  earth,  to  his  practical 
ministry.  If  his  thought  is  a  dream,  his  en- 
deavor for  man  is  a  delusion. 


62        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

The  same  remark  applies  to  the  rest  of  the 
New  Testament.  The  first  thing  that  impresses 
one  in  reading  the  Epistles  is  the  supremacy  of 
the  prophetic  mind.  They  are  charged  with 
thought,  these  apostles  of  the  Lord.  Granted 
that  they  fall  short  of  the  mind  of  their  Master, 
they  also  fail  no  less  signally  in  the  reproduc- 
tion of  his  life.  Imperfection  is  part  of  their 
nature,  but  it  is  as  conspicuous  in  their  character 
as  in  their  philosophy.  If  these  writings  are 
precious  for  the  spirit  that  they  enshrine,  they 
are  equally  grand  for  the  scheme  of  the  universe, 
and  man's  place  in  it,  that  is  implicit  in  them 
all,  and  that  in  some  of  them  receives  even  monu- 
mental expression.  To  say  that  it  is  conceivable 
that,  some  day  in  the  far  future,  the  church  may 
transcend  apostolic  thought,  is  at  once  granted; 
but  it  is  likewise  thinkable,  and  indeed  not  at  all 
unlikety,  that  believers  ages  hence  may  trans- 
cend the  fullness  and  glory  of  apostolic  life.  If 
the  church  is  ever  carried  so  far  in  her  thought, 
it  will  be  on  the  strength  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  if 
she  is  ever  lifted  so  high  in  her  life,  it  will  be  by 
the  same  Divine  Helper.  The  intellectual  and 
moral  aspects  of  Christianity,  whether  as  found  in 
Jesus  or  as  seen  in  his  immediate  followers,  are 
the  aspects  of  the  one  undivided  truth. 

Christian  history  has,  within  the  present  gen- 
eration, been  subjected  to  a  new  operation. 
What  is  termed  the  scientific  analysis  of  the  his- 


THE  ANALYSIS    OF   HISTORY.  63 

tory  of  Christianity  lias  been  undertaken.  The 
initial  assumption  is  that  the  religion  of  Jesus  is 
a  fixed  quantity ;  that  it  can  be  definitely  charac- 
terized, if  not  measured,  as  it  goes  forth  into 
the  world  from  his  spirit;  and  that  it  can  be 
traced,  in  the  general  stream  of  historic  opinion, 
tradition,  institution,  ritual,  and  life,  as  a  dis- 
tinct current.  This  certainly  is  an  interesting 
line  of  investigation,  and  cannot  fail  to  exhibit  in 
a  fresh  way  the  many  contributions  which  have 
been  made  from  many  sources  toward  the  grand 
compound  of  historic  Christianity.  But  the  new 
study  becomes  serious  when  one  discovers  that  it 
is  undertaken,  in  many  instances  at  least,  in  the 
interest  of  a  certain  type  of  theology.  If  it  can 
be  shown,  as  it  certainly  can,  that  Greek  philoso- 
phy, and  Stoic  preaching,  and  Roman  law,  insti- 
tution, and  ritual  went  to  the  formation  of  early 
Christianity,  it  is  assumed  that  these  contribu- 
tions are  alien  elements,  —  discolorations  of  the 
stream  of  the  primitive  faith,  which,  now  that  it 
is  flowing  through  the  fine  white  sand  of  exhaus- 
tive historical  analysis,  is  regaining  its  original 
purity.  It  is  this  assumption  that  must  be  re- 
sisted ;  for  it  amounts  to  the  denial  of  the  worth 
of  history,  and  the  negation  of  Christianity  as 
the  religion  of  the  Absolute  Spirit.  The  earth  is 
the  Lord's  and  the  fullness  thereof;  and  a  living 
religion,  like  a  living  man,  must  subsist  upon 
the  food  available  for  it  in  the  historic  process. 


64        CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

Christianity  is  the  Holy  Spirit  of  assimilation 
and  growth,  and  its  task  is  to  redeem  the  intel- 
lectual treasure  of  the  world,  no  less  than  its 
vital;  to  gather  together  from  the  four  winds  of 
heaven  the  elect  thoughts  of  mankind ;  to  build 
into  itself  all  the  truth  and  all  the  love  in  the 
world,  and  to  carry  them  onward  to  their  perfect 
forms.  Historic  analysis  for  the  sake  of  a  deeper 
insight  into  the  original  vital  principle  of  Chris- 
tian thought  and  life,  and  in  the  interest  of  a 
profounder  homage  to  that  which  must  be  the 
standard  for  all  development,  the  mind  and  heart 
of  the  Lord,  is  worthy  of  all  honor.  Historic 
analysis  for  the  purpose  of  showing  the  alien 
origin  of  a  given  form  of  Christian  thought,  and 
with  the  hope  that  the  result  may  be  an  entire 
discrediting  of  all  endeavors  after  a  rational  the- 
ology, is  vitiated  by  its  animus,  and  doomed  by  its 
collision  with  man's  ineradicable  belief  that  he 
is  living  in  an  intelligible  universe. 

The  reason  given  for  refusing  to  recognize  re- 
flective thought  as  essential  to  Christianity  is 
that  most  of  its  historic  forms  have  been  tran- 
scended. Poor  psychology  and  poor  metaphysics 
disfigure  the  annals  of  the  church.  We  cannot 
hope,  so  it  is  contended,  to  do  more  than  repeat 
the  unavailing  efforts  of  Origen  and  Athanasius, 
TertuUian  and  Augustine.  That  which  can  be 
transcended  cannot  be  an  essential  part  of  reli- 
gion.    Now  this  argument  proves  too  much;  for 


UNITY   OF    THOUGHT  AND    LIFE.  65 

it  applies  equally  to  ethics,  and  indeed  to  the 
whole  life  of  these  Christian  centuries.  The 
moral  problem,  the  problem  of  the  conscience,  has 
been  as  far  from  solution,  the  eonian  search  for 
righteousness  for  the  individual  and  society  has 
been  as  far  from  finality,  as  has  been  the  case 
with  the  question  of  reason.  If  we  abandon  the- 
ology because  it  lies  in  its  nature  to  be  tran- 
scended, we  must  abandon  life,  for  an  equal  im- 
perfection lies  upon  all  its  forms.  Life  is  indeed 
deeper  infinitely  than  the  intellect,  but  its  ethical 
problem  is  still  as  far  from  solution  as  is  the 
rational  problem.  To  live  the  perfect  life  is  at 
present  as  impossible  as  it  is  to  have  all  know- 
ledge. We  know  in  part,  and  out  of  that  partial 
knowledge  build  our  theologies ;  we  are  not  per- 
fected in  love,  and  out  of  that  imperfection  we 
construct  our  lives.  If  the  note  of  incomplete- 
ness discredits  thought,  it  must  also  discredit  life. 
The  Christian  idea  of  the  Holy  Spirit  would 
seem  to  make  impossible  this  denial  of  the  worth 
of  history,  both  on  its  intellectual  and  on  its 
moral  sides.  The  tasks  of  the  reason  and  of  the 
conscience  are  infinite ;  they  are  nothing  less  than 
the  knowledge  and  love  of  God  reproduced  in 
human  life.  The  problems  of  truth  and  right- 
eousness are  the  problems  of  the  Divine  Spirit, 
and  he  will  solve  both  through  the  historic  pro- 
cess. The  man  who  undertakes  to  do  the  work 
of  an  entire  age,  like  some  father  of  the  higher 


66         CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

criticism  or  some  theologian  who  would  stereo- 
type thought  for  the  church  for  all  time,  is  fore- 
ordained to  failure.  Nations  and  ages  have  their 
work,  and  it  is  too  vast  for  other  hands.  Hu- 
manity has  its  task,  and  only  humanity  can 
accomplish  it ;  rather  let  us  say  that  the  Eternal 
Spirit  has  his  task  in  the  revelation  of  the  mind 
and  heart  of  God  to  mankind,  and  only  God, 
operating  through  the  entire  term  of  history,  can 
achieve  God's  work.  The  moral  faith  cannot 
long  survive  the  death  of  the  rational;  the  trust 
that  is  not  overcome  before  the  vital  obligation 
set  forth  in  the  august  and  almost  incredible 
words,  "Ye  therefore  shall  be  perfect,  as  your 
heavenly  Father  is  perfect,"^  depends  upon  the 
confidence  that  accepts  the  privilege  of  know- 
ing the  love  of  Christ  that  passeth  knowledge.^ 
Knowledge  and  character,  truth  and  righteous- 
ness, are  equally  impossible  as  finalities  in  time ; 
they  are  humanity's  task  for  eternity. 

III. 

Taking  now  a  wider  view  of  the  faith  of  our 
time,  we  can  see  that  certain  great  advances  have 
been  made  in  the  proper  intellectual  appreciation 
of  the  Person  of  our  Lord.  His  representative 
value  manward  was  never  so  clearly  discerned  as 
now.  It  is  one  of  the  magnificent  commonplaces 
of  the  Christian  teaching  of  the  time  that,  in 
1  Matt.  V.  48.  2  Eph.  iii.  19. 


THE    CONFESSIONAL    IN    FAITH.  67 

obedience  to  the  Divine  Will  and  in  self-sacrifice 
among  men,  Jesus  is  our  supreme  example. 
There  is  in  him  a  mighty  imitable,  reproducible 
character.  The  imitation  of  Christ  is  the  task 
of  humanity.  His  followers  are  those  who  are 
seeking  to  become  what  he  was ;  his  disciples  are 
the  men  who  are  trying  to  learn  the  art  of  right 
living  from  him. 

This  truth,  now  a  commonplace  of  Christian 
faith,  has  again  and  again  been  almost  lost  from 
the  consciousness  of  the  church,  and  that,  too, 
for  long  periods  of  time.  The  Augustinian 
thought  so  emphasized  the  evil  in  human  nature 
as  to  call  for  a  conscious  crisis  in  the  life  of  the 
individual  before  he  could  think  of  liimseK,  with- 
out additional  sin,  as  a  candidate  for  the  purity 
and  elevation  of  the  New  Testament  morality. 
The  sense  of  sin  burdened  the  conscience  with 
the  duty  of  confession.  Even  Augustine's  great- 
est book  —  that  by  which  he  has  spoken  to  the 
deepest  in  man,  that  by  which  he  speaks  to  the 
heart  of  to-dav  —  has  this  ofreat  defect,  that  it 
makes  the  confessional  element  too  prominent  in 
the  duty  of  the  Christian  life.  The  confessional 
character  is  in  all  true  faith;  for  how  can  man 
measure  his  poor  actual  against  the  ideal  without 
the  feeling  of  utter  humiliation?  And  it  must 
ever  remain  a  comfort  to  express  in  hymn  and 
prayer,  in  secret  meditation  and  solitary  dialogue 
with  God,  one's  sense  of  nothingness  in  the  pres- 


68        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY, 

ence  of  ideal  excellence.  If  one  is  an  honest 
man,  one  will  crave  the  privilege  of  confession 
upon  discovering  the  fact  that  one's  life  is  far 
away  from  conformity  with  its  standard.  It  is 
not  an  unjust  criticism  that  holds  that  the  absence 
from  Christian  experience  of  the  confessional 
note  argues  a  shallow  soul.  For  it  is  undeni- 
able that,  as  one  enters  the  classic  literature  of 
the  spirit  alive  with  the  sense  of  God,  one  hears 
at  once  and  forever  the  deep  and  unceasing 
voice  of  lamentation.  The  Psalms,  the  great 
hymns  of  the  church,  Dante's  monumental  poem, 
and  indeed  all  the  profounder  religious  utterances 
of  mankind,  are  shot  through  with  the  sense  of 
unspeakable  regret  and  grief.  There  is  such 
disparity  between  the  vision  and  the  conscious 
attainment  of  the  inspired  spirit  that  the  cry 
must  come:  "Woe  is  me!  for  I  am  undone; 
because  I  am  a  man  of  unclean  lips,  and  I  dwell 
in  the  midst  of  a  people  of  unclean  lips :  for  mine 
eyes  have  seen  the  King,  the  Lord  of  hosts!  "^ 
Here  is  the  consciousness  which,  when  it  becomes 
exclusive,  makes  all  hearty  acceptance  of  Christ 
as  the  moral  standard  for  common  men  absolutely 
impossible.  It  is  a  magnificent  consciousness, 
and  it  has  a  permanent  place  in  Christian  exj)eri- 
ence,  but  it  must  be  qualified  by  that  other  con- 
sciousness yet  more  magnificent  expressed  in  the 
apostolic  words,  "I  can  do  all  things  in  him  that 

^  Isa.  vi.  5. 


OUB    DEBT    TO    UNITABIANS.  69 

strengtlieneth  me."^  But  for  the  mystics,  this 
consciousness,  that  the  morality  of  God  in  Christ 
is  the  morality  for  man,  would  have  been  lost  to 
the  world  for  more  than  a  thousand  years.  Un- 
der the  supremacy  of  the  Augustinian  and  Cal- 
vinistic  conception  of  human  nature,  the  conscious- 
ness of  sm  necessarily  tends  to  become  exclusive, 
and  the  task  of  Christian  living  to  become  more 
and  more  a  lamentation  over  the  defect  of  charac- 
ter and  a  despair  of  goodness.  More  and  more 
salvation  must  become,  not  the  act  by  which  God 
educates  his  children  and  claims  his  own,  but 
the  triumph  of  Almighty  pity  over  sheer  worth- 
lessness.  This  overdone  sense  of  depravity,  hard- 
ened into  dogma,  stood  for  centuries  against  the 
truth  that  the  morality  of  God  in  Christ  is  the 
morality  for  mankind.  The  truth  has  at  last 
prevailed,  and  at  this  point  of  belief  Christian 
people  everywhere  are  under  an  immense  debt  to 
the  great  Unitarian  leaders.  It  is  impossible  to 
be  too  thankful  for  these  words  of  Dr.  Channing : 
"Expect  no  good  from  Jesus  any  further  than 
you  clothe  yourselves  with  excellence.  He  can 
impart  to  you  nothing  so  precious  as  himself,  as 
his  own  mind.  Look  up  to  the  illustrious  Son  of 
God  with  the  conviction  that  you  may  become 
one  with  him  in  thought,  in  feeling,  in  power,  in 
holiness.  The  most  lamentable  skepticism  on 
earth,  and  incomparably  the  most  common,  is  a 

1  Pliilippians  v.  13. 


70        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

skepticism  as  to  the  greatness,  powers,  and  high 
destinies  of  human  nature.  In  this  greatness  I 
desire  to  cherish  an  unvarying  faith.  Tell  me 
not  of  the  universal  corruption  of  the  race.  Hu- 
manity has  already,  in  not  a  few  instances,^  borne 
conspicuously  the  likeness  of  Christ  and  God. 
In  such  men  I  learn  that  the  soul  was  made  in 
God's  image,  and  made  to  conform  itself  to  the 
loveliness  and  greatness  of  his  Son."^  The  title 
of  the  discourse  from  which  these  words  are 
taken  —  The  Imitableness  of  Christ's  Character 
—  might  well  serve  as  a  summary  of  the  vast 
service  that  Unitarianism  has  rendered  to  the 
Christian  belief  of  the  century.  Channing,  and 
Hedge,  and  Peabody,  and  Furness,  and  their 
contemporaries,  refused  to  be  forever  shut  up 
within  the  consciousness  of  moral  defect  and  in- 
firmity. They  held  that  the  morality  of  Jesus 
has  power  to  give  life  to  the  spirit  to  which  it 
comes;  that  it  elicits  into  clearness  and  strength 
the  aboriginal  human  endowment;  sets  free  the 
divine  in  man^s  constitution,  and  invests  it  with 
new  vigor  and  prophetic  invincibility.  The  lead- 
ers of  the  Unitarian  movement  were  men  of 
exalted  spirit;  in  them  the  ethical  and  religious 
principles  lived  in  great  power.  They  were  un- 
impeachable examples  of  the  high  doctrine  that 
they  proclaimed.  Largely  through  their  insjjired 
fidelity  to  their  high  teaching,  the  idea  has  become 

1  Channing' s  Works,  p.  316. 


TOTAL    DEPBAVITY.  71 

current  again  that  the  example  of  Christ  is  the 
standard  for  man. 

There  is  no  reason  why  this  clear  achievement 
of  Christian  faith  should  not  remain.  It  has  far 
less  to  fear  from  the  avowed  enemies  of  high 
morality  than  from  a  narrow  religious  zeal.  No- 
thing can  obliterate  the  modern  sense  of  amen- 
ableness  to  the  ethics  of  Christ  except  a  fresh 
deluge  of  the  old  exclusive  consciousness  of  human 
sinfulness.  That  which,  when  normal  and  pres- 
ent in  just  proportions,  is  the  sign  of  a  noble 
spirit,  becomes  in  its  exclusive  form  among 
men  at  large  the  utter  wreck  of  moral  hope. 
The  despair  of  goodness  is  followed  by  the  aban- 
donment of  all  effort  to  reach  it.  The  conscious- 
ness of  sin,  so  noble  and  so  mighty  when  it  exists 
as  a  secondary  consciousness,  turns  out  to  be, 
when  it  assumes  an  exaggerated  depth,  one  of  the 
worst  plagues  of  human  society.  And  the  door 
is  ever  open  for  the  return  of  this  evil  in  the 
disparity  between  the  vision  and  the  achievement 
of  the  Christian  life.  We  see  the  Hebrew  leader 
upon  Pisgah,  surveying  in  a  few  moments  the 
land  of  promise,  mastering  in  vision  in  less  than 
an  hour  that  which  his  people  required  centuries 
to  accomplish.  So  far  does  vision  outrun  attain- 
ment. How  is  the  despair  which  is  the  almost 
sure  result  of  this  experience  to  be  met?  Are 
we  not  on  the  edge  of  the  old  bottomless  gulf 
of  total  depravity  ?     Are  we  not  on  the  point  of 


72        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

surrendering  as  a  mere  dream  the  great  convic- 
tion, now  so  deep  and  clear,  that  the  morality  of 
Christ  is  the  morality  for  man? 

It  must  be  remembered  that  character  is  an 
achievement  in  time.  One  must  think  of  the 
eternal,  ineffable  vision  in  which  God  lives;  one 
must  not  forget  that  even  the  Creator  is  compelled 
to  wait  for  the  realization  of  his  purpose.  His 
infinite  ineffable  vision  is  his  habitation,  in  that 
he  waits  for  the  song  of  the  morning  stars,  and 
the  shoutings  of  the  sons  of  God;  in  that  he 
waits  for  the  birth  of  time,  the  growth  of  our 
planet,  the  appearance  of  life,  the  coming  of 
man,  the  advent  of  his  Son,  and  the  eternal  con- 
summation of  his  kingdom.  God  is  a  beholding 
and  a  waiting  God.  The  Creative  Spirit  lives 
in  his  perfect  vision  and  waits  for  its  accomplish- 
ment. Now  the  prophetic  gift  is  the  power  to 
share  God's  vision,  entertain  his  design,  behold 
his  plan  for  mankind.  And  what  shall  the  pro- 
phet come  to,  if  he  partakes  only  in  the  vision  of 
the  Eternal?  Abraham  had  his  vision  of  a  pos- 
terity numerous  as  the  stars  in  the  Syrian  sky 
under  which  he  pitched  his  tent,  and  he  died  with 
only  one  son  the  heir  of  the  vast  promise.  Moses 
had  his  vision  of  a  multitude  of  slaves  wrought 
over  into  a  mighty  nation,  conformed  in  the 
whole  reach  of  personal,  domestic,  and  civic  life 
to  the  conscience  of  Jehovah,  and  he  went  up  into 
Pisgah   to  die,  leaving  his  people  in  the  plain 


THE   PATIENCE    OF    GOD.  73 

below  little  better  still  than  a  crowd  of  slaves. 
Isaiah  beholds  Judah  regenerated,  her  kingdom 
reestablished  in  righteousness,  and  Jehovah  ad- 
ministering the  empire  of  the  world  through  her 
influence,  and  the  inspired  statesman  was  hardly 
in  his  grave  when  Judah  was  swept  into  captiv- 
ity. The  apostle  beheld  a  new  heaven  and  a 
new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness,  and 
after  the  labor  and  sorrow  of  nearly  two  thou- 
sand years  men  wait  for  the  realization  of  the 
dream.  Unless  the  prophet  shall  share  equally 
in  the  vision  and  the  patience  of  God,  he  will 
run  the  earth  wild,  he  will  end  in  despair. 
Wherever  one  fmds  the  share  in  the  vision 
greater  than  the  participation  in  the  patience  of 
the  Divine,  there  one  hears  the  sorrow  of  the  seer, 
the  wail  of  the  prophet,  the  passionate,  despairing 
cry  of  the  man  of  God,  "O  Lord,  how  long?" 
The  prophetic  office  of  Christian  people  must  be 
pressed  to  this  double  participation.  Men  can 
keep  the  vision,  as  the  image  of  the  final  truth, 
only  as  they  hold  in  the  heart  the  waiting  spirit. 

There  is  further  no  insincerity  in  thinking  of 
the  joy  of  beholding  while  one  waits  for  the  hour 
of  completed  achievement.  It  was  a  noble  thought 
of  Aristotle,  although  overdone  in  his  hands,  that 
the  supreme  blessedness  of  the  Infinite  consisted 
in  the  absoluteness  of  his  vision,  and  that  the  sov- 
ereisrn  beatitude  of  human  life  was  to  share  in  the 
clearest,  completest  manner,  and  for  the  longest 


74        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY, 

time,  the  Divine  outlook.  The  apostle  on  Patmos 
could  do  nothing  for  the  immediate  relief  of  the 
church,  but  he  could  behold,  and  that  was  much. 
Dante,  driven  from  the  Florence  of  his  love, 
could  accomplish  nothing  in  the  way  of  carrying 
out  the  reforms  that  she  so  greatly  needed;  but 
he  had  his  immortal  vision  to  warn,  to  purify, 
and  to  exalt  hun.  Shakespeare  was  unable  to 
mend  the  England  of  his  age.  The  task  was 
altogether  beyond  his  strength.  But  he  could 
mirror  in  the  noblest  language  the  vast  movement 
of  life  that  he  beheld.  He  was  able  to  behold 
the  tragic  movement,  to  note  the  inspirations  that 
informed  it,  to  mark  the  mysterious  power  that 
guided  it,  to  look  with  awe  and  pity  upon  the 
pathetic  and  tragic  path  of  its  advance,  and  to 
anticipate  the  mighty  issues  upon  which  it  was 
sweeping.  The  active,  achieving  nature  is  not 
the  whole  man;  there  is  the  contemplative,  the 
beholding  side.  The  greatest  of  all  the  beati- 
tudes is  this:  "The  pure  in  heart  shall  see  God."  ^ 
Thus,  by  the  assertion  of  the  rights  of  the  contem- 
plative mood,  by  discovering  the  sj)rings  in  the 
desert  of  the  actual  created  by  beholding  the 
divine,  and  by  sharing  in  equal  proportions  both 
in  the  vision  and  the  patience  of  God,  believers 
are  able  to  resist  the  spirit  of  despair  that  inevi- 
tably comes  when  one  looks  upon  what  the  world 
should  be,  and  then  upon  what  it  is. 

1  Matt.  V.  8. 


THE   MORALITY   FOR    MAN.  75 

These  reflections  are  part  of  the  reserves  o£  the 
sph-it  with  which  it  is  able  to  resist  the  mood  that 
would  deprive  the  world  of  what  I  have  termed 
the  great  commonplace  of  Christian  teaching  to- 
day, —  the  amenableness  of  human  society  to  the 
moral  standard  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  ideal  is 
not  an  impossible  one.  As  matter  of  fact,  the 
conduct  and  spirit  of  Christian  nations  are  under 
its  stimulus  and  rebuke.  This  surely  is  gain. 
There  have  been  times  when  the  morality  of  Jesus 
was  held  to  be  impossible  for  ordinary  men ;  and, 
being  regarded  as  impossible,  they  naturally  felt 
absolved  from  all  obligation  to  try  to  reproduce 
it  in  character.  These  have  been  times  of  degen- 
eration and  even  rottenness  in  the  church.  Times 
of  awakening,  of  the  re-birth  of  moral  faith  and 
power,  have  been  invariably  attended  with  confi- 
dence in  the  attainability  of  a  life  like  Christ's. 
The  first  consequence  of  the  career  of  Jesus  was 
the  creation  of  moral  faith,  the  inauguration  of 
the  new  era  of  f  elf -reverence.  And  although 
that  moral  faith  and  self-reverence  have  been 
largely  lost  to  the  Christian  world  for  long  pe- 
riods of  time,  although  it  is  the  great  merit  of 
the  Unitarian  movement  in  New  England  that  it 
recovered  them,  one  feels  how  profoundly  Atha- 
nasius,  when  but  a  youth  of  twenty,  touched  and 
laid  bare  the  divine  source  of  this  moral  reju- 
venescence of  mankind.  "And  like  as  when  a 
great  king  has  entered  into  some  large  city,  and 


76        CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-BAY. 

taken  up  liis  abode  in  one  of  the  houses  there, 
such  a  city  is  at  all  events  held  worthy  of  high 
honor,  nor  does  any  enemy  or  bandit  any  longer 
descend  upon  it  and  subject  it;  but  on  the  con- 
trary it  is  thought  entitled  to  all  care,  because 
of  the  king's  having  taken  up  his  residence  in  a 
single  house  there :  so,  too,  has  it  been  with  the 
Monarch  of  all.  For  now  that  he  has  come  to  our 
realm,  and  taken  up  his  abode  in  one  body  among 
his  peers,  henceforth  the  whole  conspiracy  of  the 
enemy  against  mankind  is  checked,  and  the  corrup- 
tion of  death  which  before  was  prevailing  against 
them  is  done  away."^  This  is  the  origin  of  that 
moral  self-respect  and  confidence  that  have  had 
a  new  birth  in  the  present  century.  This  great 
revival  of  the  moral  faith  inspired  by  the  Incar- 
nation is  the  first  distinct  and  enormous  gain  in 
the  appreciation  of  the  Person  of  Christ.  There 
has  been  lodged  in  the  conscience  of  this  century 
a  sense  of  the  obligation  resting  upon  the  disci- 
ple to  imitate  and  reproduce  the  character  of  his 
Master.  Nothing  could  be  more  hoj)eful  for  our 
poor  race  than  the  hearty  acceptance  of  this  high 
faith,  than  the  sincere  acknowledgment  of  this 
obligation.  Man  then  thinks  of  himself,  not  as 
a  four-footed  beast  attempting  to  fly,  but  as  a 
wounded  eagle  wearied  with  the  struggle  against 
fierce  storms,   and  faint  because  of  misfortune. 


^  The  Incarnation,  Athanasius,  ch.  ix.  3,  4,  translated  by  A^ 
Robertson. 


THE    SON  SHIP    OF    JESUS.  77 

but  sure  of  himself  in  the  boundless  upper  deep, 
able  to  look  at  the  sun,  and  confident  of  finally 
regaining  his  lost  ascendency. 

The  second  great  gain  lies  in  the  representative 
value  of  Christ  Godward.  He  is  the  represen- 
tative son  of  God;  through  him  we  behold  our 
affinity  to  the  Eternal  Father,  our  consubstantia- 
tion  with  Deity.  When  one  thinks  how  vast  an 
influence  the  consciousness  of  his  Divine  sonship 
had  over  the  life  of  Jesus,  one  begins  to  appreci- 
ate the  greatness  of  this  gain  in  modern  Christol- 
ogy.  The  whole  significance  of  the  Baptism  of 
Jesus  lies  here.  It  marks  the  maturity  of  his 
consciousness  of  Divine  sonship.  Whatever  the 
incidents  of  the  dove  and  the  voice  may  mean, 
whatever  outward  reality  there  may  lie  under 
them,  they  become  finally  but  symbols  of  the 
consciousness  of  sonship  to  God  that  there  and 
then  became  so  absolute  in  the  Lord.  The  Bap- 
tism viewed  in  this  way  explains  the  Temptation. 
The  sense  of  the  filial  relation  to  the  Infinite,  ) 
which  at  that  time  matured  into  absolute  convic- 
tion, carried  Jesus  triumphantly  through  his  great 
trial.  Looking  into  the  Temptation  itself,  it  is 
from  first  to  last  an  attack  upon  the  conscious- 
ness of  sonship.  If  the  Tempter  can  but  break 
down  or  demoralize  that,  he  must  win  his  fight. 
And  so  the  whole  strength  of  Jesus  is  given  to 
the  pure  assertion  of  sonship;  his  task  is  to  keep 
the  sense  of  that  inviolate ;  and  his  victory  is  won 


I 


78        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

tlirouofli  the  absoluteness  of  the  filial  conscious- 
ness.  If  one  looks  at  the  Transfiguration,  the 
same  fact  appears.  The  whole  scene  has  its  sig- 
nificance as  a  fresh  and  overwhelming  expression 
of  the  sense  of  the  filial  tie  that  bound  Jesus  to 
God.  That  sense  had  come  to  maturity  at  his 
Baptism,  and  as  a  preparation  for  his  Tempta- 
tion. Although  it  has  been  renewed  from  day 
to  day  by  communion  with  his  Father,  it  has 
been  worn  by  the  labor  and  sorrow  of  his  minis- 
try, and  it  needs  to  come  to  a  second  sublimer 
maturity  that  Christ  may  come  to  his  cross  with 
victorious  power.  Wherever  one  looks  in  the 
life  of  Jesus,  one  finds  that  the  source  of  his  sin- 
lessness  and  perfect  humanity  is  his  absolute  sense 
of  divine  sonship.  His  morality  is  the  morality 
of  the  Son  of  the  Highest;  his  character  has  its 
creative  centre  in  this  great  conviction;  his  ex- 
ample carries  us  back  to  this  spring  rising  in  his 
heart  where  that  rests  upon  the  heart  of  God. 

Now,  if  the  morality  of  Christ  is  a  creation  out 
of  his  conscious  sonship  to  the  Eternal,  if  the 
ideal  that  he  holds  before  mankind  has  its  source 
here,  if  his  example  is  unmeaning  until  one  looks 
at  the  filial  soul  behind  it,  one  sees  at  once  that 
only  as  conscious  sonship  to  God  is  elicited  in 
every  man  can  he  become  a  hopeful  or  even  in- 
telligent candidate  for  the  Christian  life.  The 
consciousness  of  the  indestructible  filial  relation 
to  the  Infinite  is  the  condition  without  which  an 


THE    SON  SHIP    OF   HUMANITY.  79 

appreciation  of  Christian  morality  is  not  even 
possible.  If,  then,  the  morality  of  Christ  is  to  be 
made  available  for  the  world,  the  consciousness 
of  sonship  to  God  in  which  Christ  lived,  and  out 
of  which  his  absolute  moral  example  came,  must 
be  made  universal.  Maurice  has  pronounced  the 
First  Epistle  of  Jolin  to  be  the  best  text-book  ever 
written  on  Christian  morality;  and  one  finds  the 
dominant  note  of  that  wonderful  composition  to 
be  "now  are  we  sons  of  God."  In  that  letter  the 
Incarnation  is  presented  as  the  Eternal  Life  in 
the  life  of  Jesus,  and  the  morality  of  God  in 
Christ  is  pressed  upon  mankind  because  "now  are 
we  sons  of  God."  I  repeat,  therefore,  that  the 
example  of  Christ  has  moral  significance  for  man 
solely  because  man  is  the  child  of  God. 

According  to  habits  of  thought  but  recently 
broken  up,  God  had  only  one  son.  Our  race, 
while  in  an  unfilial  mood,  was  not  composed  of 
the  children  of  the  Highest.  By  nature  men 
belong  to  the  animal  kingdom;  to  the  kingdom 
of  the  spirit  they  belong  only  by  the  miracle  of 
regeneration  and  the  condescension  of  the  Divine 
adoption.  This  opinion  is  no  longer  preachable 
or  credible  among  thinking  men.  It  is  obviously 
inconsistent  with  Christian  theism  and  Christian 
ethics.  If  it  still  lives  in  the  schools,  it  is  utterly 
dead  in  the  great  fields  of  militant  Christendom. 
It  is  the  mother  of  fatalism  and  despair.  It  post- 
pones all  Christian  ethical  appeal  until  regenera- 


80        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

tion  lias  taken  place,  that  is,  until  the  animal  has 
been  made  over  into  a  man  and  a  child  of  God; 
and,  as  that  new  creation  is  the  work  of  the  Eter- 
nal Spirit,  Christian  morality  has  no  sj)here  of 
operation  except  in  the  extremely  limited  com- 
munity of  believers  in  their  own  regeneration. 
The  materialism  and  fatalism  underlying  the  no= 
tion  of  the  complete  animalism  of  man,  prior  to 
the  miracle  of  the  new  birth,  are  part  of  an  obso- 
lete philosophy  that  for  a  long  time  did  duty  with 
an  equally  obsolete  theology.  One  may  well  re- 
joice over  the  gain  that  has  come  in  the  recogni- 
tion of  Christ  as  the  elder  brother,  humanity's 
mighty  representative,  the  revealer  of  the  tie  that 
forever  binds  every  man  to  the  heart  of  God.  It 
was  an  overdone  and  suicidal  doctrine  of  dej)rav- 
ity  that  obscured  and  ultimately  buried  out  of 
sight  this  original  and  imperishable  revelation  of 
the  gospel.  That  there  is  the  least  difficulty 
with  this  view  in  reading  the  New  Testament 
cannot  for  one  moment  be  admitted.  The  texts 
that  speak  of  our  adoption  into  the  family  of  God 
are  explicable  upon  the  simj^le  principle  that 
men,  although  naturally  in  the  relation  of  sons, 
are  not  living  in  accordance  with  it.  They  are 
prodigal  sons,  but  still  sons.  Paul  must  be  stud- 
ied in  the  light  of  his  Master's  great  parable; 
the  apostle's  meaning  must  be  construed  with 
reference  to  the  central  truth  of  the  Incarnation ; 
his  ejjistles  must  be  enriched,  and,   if  need  be. 


CHRIST  AND  NATURE.  81 

revised  by  the  gospel.  Here,  let  it  be  repeated, 
are  the  two  inestimable  gains  of  the  church  of 
to-day  in  the  intellectual  appreciation  of  Christ. 
First,  he  is  consubstantiated  with  humanity;  and, 
second,  by  means  of  the  revelation  in  him,  hu- 
manity is  seen  to  be  consubstantiated  with  God. 

IV. 

Another  great  gain,  of  a  widely  different  char- 
acter, in  our  thought  of  Christ,  must  now  be 
noticed.  It  is  now  becoming  clear  that  the  final 
meaning  of  nature  and  the  character  of  ultimate 
reality  are  given  through  Christ.  We  live  in 
the  universe  that  he  has  made;  our  judgments 
of  truth  and  of  goodness  are  but  the  images  of 
his  mind  and  heart;  our  whole  thought  of  the  In- 
finite mystery  in  whose  presence  we  stand  has 
been  formed  under  his  influence.  Man's  view  of 
nature  is  necessarily  anthropomorphic;  since  the 
advent  of  Jesus  it  has  been,  among  all  positive 
as  opposed  to  negative  thinkers,  Christomorphic. 
The  full  significance  of  this  marvelous  suprem- 
acy is  not  as  widely  seen  as  it  shoidd  be.  It 
is  one  of  the  most  impressive  of  the  testimonies 
to  the  ascendency  of  Christ  over  our  Western 
world. 

From  the  beginning,  men  have  struggled  to 
know  the  nature  of  the  world  beyond  them.  For 
a  long  time  they  did  not  see  that,  when  they  con- 
strued it  as  matter,  they  were  using  their  own 


82        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

bodies  as  interpreter :  when  they  recognized  it  as 
life,  they  were  looking  at  it  as  a  mightier  exhi- 
bition of  the  life  of  which  they  were  conscious; 
when  they  regarded  it  as  force,  they  were  but 
reducing"  it  to  the  form  of  the  human  will.  Now 
this  conclusion  of  all  sound  thinking  has  behind 
it  a  profoundly  interesting  pre-Christian  his- 
tory. More  than  four  centuries  before  the  begin- 
ning of  our  era,  a  famous  Greek  thinker  cleared 
away  a  whole  world  of  clouds  from  the  approach 
to  nature.  He  said,  "Man  is  the  measure  of  all 
things;"  it  was  the  distinct  assertion  that  all 
speculation  must  be  in  the  forms  of  human 
thought,  that  man  must  take  himself  as  the  stand- 
ard of  judgment  in  all  questions  of  the  true, 
and  the  beautiful,  and  the  good.  Like  all  first 
thoughts,  it  was  conceived  in  a  crude  way;  like 
every  unqualified  insight,  it  was  liable  to  great 
abuse.  If  man  is  the  measure  of  all  things,  it 
was  concluded  that  whatever  he  thinks  must  be 
true,  whatever  he  fancies  must  be  beautiful,  what- 
ever he  likes  must  be  good.  And  the  descent  is 
swiftly  made  from  the  universal  to  the  particular, 
from  the  grand  general  term  "man"  to  the  spe- 
cial, living  individual.  If  man  is  the  measure  of 
all  things,  then  whatever  any  person  thinks,  and 
fancies,  and  likes  must  for  him  be  the  true,  and 
the  beautiful,  and  the  good.  But  then  there  may 
be  as  many  thoughts,  and  fancies,  and  likes  as 
there  are  human  beings;  these  may  all  stand  in 


THE  STAND ABD   THOUGHT.  83 

a  bewildering  contradiction ;  and  therefore  it  fol- 
lows that  there  is  no  truth,  or  beauty,  or  goodness 
apart  from  the  feeling  of  the  individual.  A 
truth  for  all  men,  a  beauty  for  all,  a  goodness  for 
all,  there  is  not  and  cannot  be.  Thus  the  mas:- 
nificent  insight  of  Protagoras  seems  to  plunge 
the  race  into  the  most  helpless  subjectivity,  into 
absolute  skepticism.  And  yet  the  thought  is  for- 
ever true  that  man  is  the  measure  of  all  things. 

Against  this  famous  maxim,  and  the  utter  de- 
nial of  the  reality  of  a  universal  truth  and  good- 
ness, Plato  protested  with  all  the  might  of  his 
exalted  genius.  He  held  that  God  and  man  are 
at  heart  kindred;  that  man  is  made  in  the  image 
of  the  Divine;  that  his  mind  is  thus  in  the  form 
of  the  Infinite  mind.  But  God's  thought  and 
not  man's  is  the  absolute  thought,  God's  nature 
and  not  man's  gives  the  eternal  beauty,  God's 
choice  and  not  man's  reveals  the  immutable 
good.  "  Our  God  is,  then,  the  measure  of  all 
things;"^  and  the  task  of  the  philosopher  is  to 
climb  up  into  the  Divine  outlook,  and  somehow 
obtain  access  to  the  vision,  the  love,  and  the 
determination  of  the  Infinite.  And  this  he  is 
able  to  do,  because  of  his  participation  in  the 
Divine  nature,  —  because,  as  we  should  say,  his 
mind  is  theomorphic.  It  is  the  essential  preroga- 
tive of  philosophic  genius,  according  to  Plato,  to 
ascend  from  the  mere  hmnan  outlook,  and  mea- 

^  The  Laws,  p.  716. 


84        CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

sure  truth,  beauty,  and  goodness  by  the  thought, 
and  love,  and  life  of  the  Eternal.^ 

Plato's  protest  is  magnificent,  and  this  4iigh 
faith  in  the  self -transcendence  of  human  reason 
has  held  sway  over  the  deepest  and  noblest  minds 
in  all  these  subsequent  centuries.  Yet  sometliing 
still  remained  to  be  done,  in  the  way  of  acute 
and  conclusive  thinking,  before  the  abuse  of  the 
maxim,  that  man  is  the  measure  of  all  things, 
became,  among  all  those  who  understand  the 
problem,  a  philosophic  impossibility.  This  piece 
of  valid  and  final  thinking  was  done  by  Aristotle, 
who  admitted  at  once  that  man  is  tlie  measure  of 
all  things.  He  saw  clearly  that  it  is  impossible 
for  man  to  think  except  in  terms  of  his  own 
thought,  —  that  all  human  speculations  about  the 
universe  must  be  anthropomorj)hic.  But,  grant- 
ing that  man  is  the  measure  of  all  things,  the 
decisive  question  remains  to  be  settled,  What 
man?  The  lunatic,  the  vicious,  the  slave  of  an 
unworthy  ambition?  Are  these  our  measuring- 
rods  ?  Or  must  we  not  look  for  the  cnrovSatos  avrjp^ 
the  perfect  man,  as  the  standard  of  all  truth,  and 
all  beauty,  and  all  life  ?  ^  Here  is  the  high  faith 
of  Plato  brought  under  definite  form,  drawn  to 
a  concrete  human  issue.  God's  thought  is  still 
the  absolute  truth;  man's  mind,  through  its  kin- 
ship with  the  Divine,  is  still  able  to  reproduce 

1  The  Phsedrus,  pp.  244-257. 

2  Ethics,  Book  III.  ch.  iv.  4,  5. 


THE  PEEFECT  MAN.  85 

something  of  the  vision  of  the  Infinite ;  and  the 
perfect  man  is  the  prophet  of  the  Highest,  the    / 
standard  intellect  and   heart  and  will   for  man- 
kind. 

But  the  next  question  is  one  that  philosophy 
cannot  answer;  for  it  is  a  question  of  fact,  — 
Where  is  the  perfect  man?  The  philosopher 
may  triumphantly  declare  that,  when  he  shall 
come,  he  will  show  us  all  things.  But  at  the 
date  of  the  philosophic  victory  he  had  not  ar- 
rived. The  histories  of  the  Old  World,  Egyptian, 
Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Roman,  might  be  searched, 
and  the  search  would  be  vain ;  for  no  perfect  man 
can  be  found  in  any  or  all  of  these  civilizations. 
And  it  is  in  the  light  of  reflections  like  these 
that  one  learns  what  the  great  philosophic  apostle 
meant  when,  in  the  midst  of  conflicting  minds,  he 
declares,  "But  we  have  the  mind  of  Christ."^ 

Here  is  the  vindication  at  once  of  the  insight 

1  1  Corinthians  ii.  16.  This  vast  and  profound  chapter  of 
ancient  thought,  without  whose  mastery  one  cannot  so  much  as 
find  one's  way  in  modern  speculation,  may  be  set  forth  in  the 
four  quotations  f oUowing : 

irdvTwv  XP^A'"''"'^''  fierpov  avQpoirov  (Xvai.  Man  is  the  measure 
of  all  things.     (Protagoras.) 

6  5^  dihs  r]fuv  irdvTOiv  xpTjyuaTWj/  fiirpov  &u  eXri  fxaAicTTa.     Our 
God  would  prove  to  be  supremely  the  measure  of  all  things.       -t 
(Plato.) 

6  crirovdaios  yap  eKaara  Kpivei  opQois.     The  perfect  man  is  the  \ 

perfect  judge  of  all  things.     (Aristotle.)  ^ 

rivets  5e  vovv  xp'^^toC  cxo/Mev.  But  we  have  the  mind  of 
Christ.     (Paul.) 


86        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

of  Protagoras  and  the  philosophic  faith  of  Plato ; 
here,  too,  is  the  realization  in  fact  of  the  great 
thought  of  Aristotle.  Man  is  the  measure  of 
all  things;  he  becomes  a  noble  measure  because 
he  is  able  to  reproduce  the  Divine  vision ;  he  is 
the  standard  of  reality  when  he  becomes  perfect; 
and  the  Christ  is  the  perfect  man,  and  there- 
fore the  revelation  of  the  absolute  truth  and  good- 
ness. 

This  is  the  noble  chapter  of  ancient  tliought 
and  historic  revelation,  stated  in  the  terms  of  a 
free  interpretation.  We  take  up  the  problem 
where  the  old  thmkers  left  it.  The  first  step  in 
all  clear  thinking  about  nature  is  to  recognize 
that  all  science  is  necessarily  in  tlie  forms  of 
human  thought.  As  a  recent  writer  puts  it,  "The 
proposal  to  avoid  anthropomorphism  is  as  absurd 
as  the  suggestion  that  we  should  take  an  unbiased 
outside  view  of  ourselves  by  jumping  out  of  our 
skins."  ^  Nature  understood  is  nature  put  into 
the  forms  of  the  human  mind.  If  we  are  to  con- 
strue the  outward  world  at  all,  we  must  do  it 
through  the  forms  of  our  rational  life.  The  ne- 
cessity is  laid  upon  us  to  interpret  the  universe 
in  terms  of  reason.  Mind  and  will  are  behind 
j everything,  are  under  everything;  so  we  must 
say  if  we  are  to  say  anything.  But  just  at  this 
point  the  question  comes,  What  sort  of  mind  is 
behind  the  outward  world;  what  kind  of  intelli- 

^  Riddles  of  the  Sphinx,  p.  145. 


TWO   VOICES.  87 

gence  is  behind  nature;  wliat  is  the  character  of 
the  will  that  is  under  all  things  ?  These  are  the 
deepest  of  all  questions.  And,  by  all  believers  in 
God  in  our  Western  world,  Christ's  intelligence 
and  will  have  been  selected  as  representing  the 
Supreme  Intelligence  and  Will.  It  is  in  reality 
the  reason  and  heart  of  Christ  that  we  believe  to 
lie  behind  all  things,  that  we  trust  as  the  core  of 
the  universe.  This  is  a  stupendous  stejD  to  take, 
but  it  is  a  step  that  all  believers  in  the  Christian 
God  have  taken.  Ever  since  Christ  came,  reli- 
gious thinkers  have  been  anxious  to  show  that  his 
mind  and  heart  were  identical  with  the  creative 
mind  and  heart ;  they  have  turned  the  anthropo- 
morphic view  of  the  universe  into  the  Christomor- 
phic  view.  Much  of  our  best  modern  poetry  has 
had  before  it  the  same  high  calling.  Words- 
worth, Shelley,  Emerson,  Tennyson,  and  Brown- 
ing all  glorify  nature,  all  profess  to  live  upon  its 
beauty,  all  behold  in  it  one  vast  form  of  the 
Eternal  Christ. 

At  this  point  modern  science  comes  upon  the 
scene  and  speaks  with  two  voices.  The  first  voice 
is  godless.  It  tells  of  nothing  but  the  struggle 
for  existence ;  it  declares  that  heartless  seK-seek- 
ing  is  the  absolute  law  of  the  entire  animal  world 
below  man ;  that  the  race  is  always  to  the  swift 
and  the  battle  to  the  strong;  and  that,  without 
brutal  indifference  to  others,  large  and  long- con- 
tinued success  for  any  race  of  creatures  is  impos- 


88        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

sible.  Nature,  according  to  this  view,  is  but 
another  name  for  the  selfish,  ruthless,  and  godless 
march  of  power.  There  may  be  intelligence  and 
will  behind  the  cosmic  tragedy;  but  on  a  stage 
swarming  with  self-seekers,  one  set  annihilating 
another,  and  each  generation  finally  wiped  out 
by  the  merciless  laws  of  animal  life,  there  is 
absolutely  no  hint  of  love.  This  is  the  horrible 
caricature  of  nature  that  one  finds  in  much  of  the 
first-class  scientific  literature  of  our  century. 

But  the  second  voice  of  science  is  beginning  to 
control  our  thoughts.  The  profounder  Christian 
thinkers  and  the  great  modern  poets  were  not  all 
wrong.  There  is  something  divine  in  nature. 
If  in  that  realm  there  is  a  tremendous  egoism, 
there  is  also  a  predominating  altruism ;  if  in  that 
sphere  there  is  an  incessant  struggle  for  life, 
there  is  beside  it,  and  controlling  it,  the  struggle 
for  the  life  of  others.  Without  this  unselfishness 
that  selfishness  would  defeat  itself,  and  the  lower 
animal  life  of  the  world  would  perish  in  a  genera- 
tion. To  make  possible  the  continuous  wrestle 
for  life,  we  must  have  in  nature  a  parallel  devo- 
tion to  the  life  of  others,  an  increasing  disregard 
for  self,  an  unceasing  solicitude  for  offspring. 
Throughout  the  animal  world  we  find  the  amazing 
facts  of  fatherhood  and  motherhood,  and  these 
convert  the  lion's  den  and  the  tiger's  jungle  into 
centres  of  self-sacrifice.  Throughout  the  empire 
of  living  creatures,  one  beholds  the  parent  cher- 


THE  SHADOW  OF  THE  CROSS,  89 

ishing,  feeding,  and  fitting  tlie  offspring  for  the 
battle  of  life;  everywhere  one  sees  a  large  part 
of  the  animal  kingdom  existing  mainly  for  the 
rest.  This  vast,  incessant,  and  beautiful  struggle 
for  the  life  of  others,  as  Professor  Drummond 
felicitously  terms  it,  requires  interpretation. ^ 
What  does  this  living  and  dying  for  others  mean  ? 
Is  it  not  a  hint,  a  foretoken,  a  dim  anticipation 
of  Him  who  gave  his  life  for  humanity  ?  Is  it  not 
the  shadow  of  his  cross  lying  upon  the  whole 
domain  of  creature  existence?  Is  not  the  univer- 
sal and  noble  passion  of  parental  love  the  cord  by 
which  even  the  brute  world  is  bound  to  the  heart 
of  God  ?  Thus  at  last,  by  the  hand  of  science, 
we  behold  the  struggle  for  the  life  of  others,  that 
was  the  supreme  note  in  the  career  of  Christ, 
carried  back  through  the  entire  kingdom  of  brute 
life,  traced  out  beyond  space  and  time,  and  fol- 
lowed up  to  its  seat  in  the  eternal  love  of  God 
for  his  universe.  Nature  still  remains  dark 
enough;  the  contention  is  not  that  the  gloom  is 
abolished,  but  that  it  is  relieved.  The  devour- 
ing egoism  remains  part  of  the  life  of  the  animal 
world.  We  can  see  how  essential  that  self-assert- 
iveness  is  to  the  issues  of  life.  Those  who  make 
it  the  sole  essential  law  of  all  improving  exist- 
ence should  not  forget  the  improvement  in  which 
it  issues,  when  they  come  to  sit  in  ethical  judg- 
ment upon  the  law.     Granted  that  the  necessity 

^  The  Ascent  of  Man,  Introduction  ii. 


90        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

for  the  ferocious  egoism  in  animal  existence  is  an 
absolute  mystery,  the  fact  that  it  is  a  vanishing 
force,  and  that  from  the  first  it  is  clearly  un- 
der the  ascendency  of  another  force,  the  altruis- 
tic impulse  of  parenthood  pours  a  flood  of  light 
through  the  whole  wild  process  of  nature.  An 
egoism  that  is  vanishing,  that  from  the  first  has 
been  under  the  direction  of  altruism,  that,  as  life 
has  risen  in  value,  has  fallen  into  a  subordination 
more  and  more  marked,  and  that,  in  the  thought 
of  mankind  as  the  final  cause  of  evolution,  sinks 
into  the  temporary  servant  and  forerunner  of  an 
ultimate  victorious  love,  may  remain  as  a  distress, 
but  not  as  unmitigated  or  lasting. 

The  egoism  in  nature  that  appears  so  opposed 
to  a  lofty  interpretation  of  its  purpose  is  but  the 
counterpart  of  what  we  find  in  human  history 
under  the  name  of  sin.  The  employment  of  an 
excessive  individualism  in  nature,  and  the  per- 
mission of  irrational  selfishness  and  an  evil  will 
in  humanity,  are  facts  for  which  the  Almighty 
has,  without  doubt,  the  highest  reason,  but  thus 
far  there  has  been  no  revelation  of  it.  But  if  in 
nature  and  in  humanity  the  tremendous  individ- 
ualism, the  devouring  passion,  has  from  the  first 
been  under  the  control  of  an  opposing  principle, 
the  force  of  self-sacrifice ;  and  if,  further,  the  vast 
form  of  egoism  both  in  the  animal  world  and  in 
the  human  is  suffering  reduction,  with  the  great 
prophecy  forever  uttering   itself   of   the   far-off 


THE   ULTIMATE  REALITY.  91 

goal  toward  whicli  the  whole  movement  is  di- 
rected, when  altruism  shall  be  all  in  all,  —  then 
the  universe,  under  both  its  aspects,  is  no  longer 
incompatible  with  absolute  goodness.  Both  na- 
ture and  history  may  be  brought  to  the  highest 
in.  humanity  for  interpretation.  History  has  for 
eighteen  centuries  been  made  to  yield  its  meaning 
in  this  way,  and  at  length  nature  comes  to  the 
same  test. 

Now  this  interpretation  of  the  higher  and  final 
significance  of  nature  through  Christ  is  but  the 
fresh  assertion  that  we  cannot  go  beyond  him. 
Our  human  universe  is  a  Christian  universe. 
The  best  in  nature,  the  best  in  human  history, 
the  best  in  the  hope  of  the  world,  is  but  the 
image  of  Christ.  Thus,  so  far  as  we  have  a  God, 
Christ  is  in  very  truth  our  God.  We  baptize 
the  Creative  Being  behind  nature  and  behind 
human  history  and  life  into  the  name  of  Christ. 
We  do  all  that  we  do,  when  we  do  our  best,  in 
the  power  of  Christ.  A  nature  with  the  hint  of 
Christ  in  it,  a  humanity  capable  of  putting  on  the 
form  of  his  love,  a  universe  gathering  itself  up 
into  Christ  as  its  head,  —  that  is  our  best  think- 
ing. It  may  be  true  or  it  may  be  false,  but  it 
is  what  we  all  do  when  we  do  our  best.  We 
have  heard  recently  of  certain  persons  who  pre- 
tend to  have  the  power  of  leaving  and  returning 
to  their  bodies  at  will,  —  of  certain  disembodied 
spirits  sitting  on  the  mantelpiece  and  taking  an 


92        CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

outside  view  of  themselves.  That  is  the  super- 
lative of  hallucination.  Men  are  not  permitted 
to  jumj)  out  of  their  skin,  unless  they  jump  for 
good;  they  are  not  allowed  to  take  a  position 
beyond  themselves  in  order  to  get  an  outside 
view.  A  mirror,  or  the  mind  of  an  honest  friend, 
is  the  nearest  they  can  get  to  that  feat.  And  in 
the  same  way,  those  who  think  they  can  transcend 
Christ,  and  look  at  this  universe  as  if  he  had 
never  lived,  are  fooling  themselves  with  the  vain- 
est imaginations.  A  view  of  this  universe,  even 
an  atheistic  one,  unmodified  by  Christ,  is  not 
possible ;  and  for  proof  I  may  cite  the  ethics  and 
the  mysticism  of  Positivism.  Much  less  is  a 
religious  view  of  the  universe  possible  uncon- 
trolled by  our  Lord.  He  is  the  Alpha  and 
Omega  of  all  our  high  thinking,  the  beginning 
and  the  end.  Our  universe,  at  first  anthropomor- 
phic, is  now  Christomorphic.  Our  civilization  is 
the  product  of  Christ.  Through  the  struggle  in 
it  for  the  life  of  others,  nature  is  coming  within 
the  compass  of  the  cross.  The  universe,  regarded 
from  of  old  as  the  work  of  thought,  is  now  held 
to  be  the  work  of  Christian  thought.  To  affirm 
that  our  universe  is  anthropomorphic  is  to  assert 
that  God  is  a  human  God ;  to  discover  that  it  is 
Christomorphic  is  to  declare  that  God  is  a  Chris- 
tian God.  This  is  the  transformation  that  the 
Founder  of  Christianity  has  wrought  in  the  form 
of  hmnan  thinking.     The   best  thing  that  men 


THBEE  GEE  AT  GAINS.  93 

can  say  is,  we  have  the  mind  of  Christ;  for  the 
intellect,  no  less  than  the  conscience,  he  is  a 
finality.  His  encompassing  presence,  and  the 
fact  that  he  conditions  the  whole  working  philoso- 
phy of  the  higher  mind  of  mankind,  that  he  domi- 
nates the  spirit,  and  supplies  the  form  for  our 
ultimate  thought  of  all  things,  prepare  the  reason 
for  the  measureless  significance  of  his  Person. 
These  reflections  do  not  prove  that  he  is  at  the 
heart  of  the  universe,  but  they  do  prove  that  he 
is  at  the  heart  of  our  human  universe;  they  do 
not  demonstrate  the  reality  of  his  absolute  ascen- 
dency, but  they  do  demonstrate  his  ascendency 
over  mankind. 


Three  great  advances  have  thus  been  made 
in  the  intellectual  appreciation  of  the  Person  of 
Christ.  He  is  the  acknowledged  representative 
of  humanity,  the  accepted  revelation  of  the  essen- 
tial kinship  of  the  divine  and  the  human,  and  the 
guide  to  the  ultimate  meaning  of  nature.  The 
morality  of  the  Highest  is  the  morality  for  man; 
it  is  so  because  man  is  the  son  of  the  Highest; 
and  nature  has  its  origin  in  the  primal  love  that 
never  fails  to  guide  the  whole  cosmic  process, 
that  shines  in  the  altruism  that  burns  brighter 
and  brighter  against  the  vanishing  ferocity  of 
brute  existence,  and  that  controls  human  history 
in  the  cross  of  the  Master.     Beyond  this,  how- 


94        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

ever,  in  the  thought  of  to-day,  all  is  dark.  That 
there  is  in  Christ  any  essential  otherness  from 
mankind,  any  relationship  to  the  Deity  that  sets 
him  apart  from  mankind,  any  attribute  in  virtue 
of  which  he  is  the  Eternal  Son  of  God,  it  is  diffi- 
cult for  many  minds  in  our  time  to  believe.  We 
accept  from  him  a  doctrine  of  morality,  a  concep- 
tion of  humanity,  and  a  faith  in  nature ;  but  we 
are  still  unable  to  see  the  richness  and  essential- 
ness  of  his  idea  of  God.  Unless  we  obtain  from 
Christ,  in  addition  to  a  clue  to  the  meaning  of 
nature,  an  immutable  morality,  and  a  conception 
of  the  divineness  of  man,  a  doctrine  of  God,  we 
cannot  be  said  to  have  mastered  the  secret  of  his 
character.  His  idea  of  an  eternal  Fatherhood  in 
!  the  Infinite  is  the  heart  of  the  matter.  If  we 
I  can  retain  that  as  the  deepest  reality  in  the  uni- 
'^  verse,  we  have  our  guide  to  the  interpretation  of 
the  remaining  mystery  in  the  life  of  Jesus. 

The  fundamental  defect  in  current  thought 
about  Christ  is  an  overdone  principle  of  identity. 
To-day,  otherness  in  Christ  to  humanity  counts 
for  nothing.  This  is  indeed  a  curious  intellectual 
mood.  It  is  a  pushing  of  the  law  of  identity  to 
the  extremest  lengths;  it  is  a  ruling-out  of  the 
law  of  difference  in  the  most  radical  fashion. 
Now,  all  knowledge  rests  upon  these  two  great 
laws  of  kinship  and  contrast ;  and  if  there  be,  as 
there  most  certainly  is,  a  plurality  of  beings  in 
the  universe,  that  plurality  must  embody  the  two 


IDENTITY  AND  DIFFERENCE.  95 

fundamental  principles  of  identity  and  difference. 
Between  the  object  of  sense  —  the  flower,  the 
tree,  or  the  hill  —  and  the  mind  that  apprehends 
it  there  must  be  kinship ;  otherwise  the  two  could 
not  come  together:  but  it  is  equally  clear  that 
between  them  there  must  be  contrast;  otherwise 
there  coidd  be  no  subject  and  object,  that  is,  no 
knowledge.  Among  himian  beings  there  must  be 
a  vast  attribute  in  common,  as  this  is  essential 
to  the  fact  of  brotherhood;  but  there  must  be 
among  them  special  endowment,  in  the  strictest 
sense,  private  property,  as  on  any  other  ground 
individuality  or  personality  would  be  a  myth. 
Through  all  the  ranks  of  life  there  must  run  a 
sublime  identity.  There  is  a  sense  even  now  in 
which  God  must  be  all  in  all.  A  qualified  but 
magnificent  pantheism  is  involved  in  the  very 
notion  of  a  universe.  All  things  are  bound  by 
common  affinities  to  one  centre;  in  Him  all 
things  consist,  and  all  men  have  their  being. 
Historical  pantheism,  the  typical  fascinating  pan- 
theism of  Spinoza,  is  in  error  only  through  its 
exclusiveness.  The  conception  of  one  universal 
substance  is  true  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  is  not 
the  whole  truth.  The  strand  of  difference  runs 
throughout  creation.  As  without  the  identity 
there  can  be  no  unity,  so  without  the  difference 
there  can  be  no  variety  and  no  reality  in  finite 
existences.  If  nature  is  an  order,  it  is  an  order 
of  particular  forces ;  if  human  history  is  a  unity. 


96        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY, 

there  is  multiplicity  in  the  unity.  As  in  the 
crowding  figures  of  the  saints  on  some  great 
cathedral  window  there  must  be  the  art  that 
makes  face  answer  to  face  in  a  common  rapture 
and  aspiration,  and  the  skill  that  individualizes 
and  builds  its  dreams  into  distinct  and  sacredly 
significant  personalities,  so  everywhere  through- 
out the  empire  of  life  the  two  great  principles  of 
kinship  and  contrast  must  run.  All  the  figures 
upon  the  blazing  glass  wear  in  their  faces  the 
marks  of  the  Lord,  but  the  faces  themselves  are 
entirely  distinct.  We  are  thus  led  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  upon  these  two  great  laws  of  identity 
and  difference  all  knowledge  and  all  being  finally 
rest;  and  the  highest  expression  in  humanity 
of  the  law  of  difference  is  the  Person  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

Against  this  affirmation  the  mood  to  which  I 
have  referred  looks  very  strange.  It  appears 
extreme  in  its  onesidedness.  If  there  is  complete 
identity  between  Christ  and  humanity  in  respect 
of  being  and  range  of  powers,  men  are  ready  to 
believe  on  him ;  but  if  it  is  said  that  there  is  any 
otherness,  any  eternal  difference  between  him 
and  his  brethren,  it  is  felt  that  that  must  be  a 
metaphysical  fiction.  Christ  gives  the  possible 
stature  of  every  man,  and  that  we  readily  ac- 
cept; he  reveals  the  point  at  which  every  hmiian 
life  touches  the  Eternal  Fatherhood,  and  that  we 
willingly  believe.     But  that  Jesus  should  sustain 


PANTHEISM  AND  ITS  PREMISE.  97 

to  God  a  relation  singular,  inapproachable,  in- 
effable, is  to-day  either  denied  outright  or  admit- 
ted blindly. 

Now  it  should  be  clearly  understood  that  the 
denial  of  the  possible  supreme  divinity  of  Jesus 
means  the  absolute  destruction  of  all  individu- 
ality. If  identity  is  the  sole  canon  of  reality, 
then  whatever  departures  there  may  be  from  that 
law  in  the  present  constitution  of  the  material 
universe  and  human  life  are  non-essential  for 
being,  and  therefore  of  no  importance  for  thought. 
If  a  particular  man  is  completely  understood 
through  the  concept  man;  if  we  have  nothing 
more  to  say  of  an  Aristotle,  a  Shakespeare,  a 
Cromwell,  or  a  Beethoven  than  that  he  is  com- 
prehended under  the  general  notion  of  mankind; 
if  in  our  sense  of  truth  we  are  dominated  solely  by 
the  principle  of  kinship,  —  we  destroy  the  beau- 
tiful individualism  of  nature,  we  take  no  account 
of  human  genius,  we  reduce  the  living  world  to 
a  dead  monotony,  and  sink  all  particular  per- 
sons in  the  gulf  of  an  absolute  pantheism.  The 
denial  of  the  possible  supreme  divinity  of  Jesus 
means  nothing  less  than  this.  For  it  proceeds 
upon  the  supposition  that  the  attributes  that  men 
have  in  common  are  the  sole,  exclusive  reality, 
and  that  the  attributes  in  which  they  differ  are 
not  attributes  at  all,  but  the  mere  accidents  of 
existence.  If  difference  is  an  illusion,  there  is  but 
one  being  in  the  universe,  and  the  present  phe- 


98        CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

nomenal  world  is  but  one  in  the  infinite  series  of 
self -exhibitions  that  that  being  is  giving  of  him- 
self. The  differences  of  distinct  minds  and  con- 
sciences and  characters;  the  contrasts  between 
the  intellects  that  behold  the  truth  and  those  that 
wander  in  error,  between  the  consciousness  that 
is  self-approving  and  the  consciousness  that  is 
self -condemning,  —  all  the  antitheses  found  in  the 
varying  range  of  endowment,  in  the  use  of  power, 
and  in  the  solid  fact  of  an  irreducible  individual- 
ism, must  be  regarded  as  a  vain  show.  If  the 
individuality  of  Jesus  is  of  no  account,  if  his 
separateness  from  sinners  means  nothing,  if  his 
genius  carries  one  nowhere,  if  he  is  real  and  sig- 
nificant only  so  far  as  he  particij)ates  in  a  com- 
mon nature,  then  indeed  it  follows  that  his  su- 
preme divinity  is  a  myth ;  but  it  turns  out  also 
that  human  personality  is  a  myth,  that  all  claim 
to  reality  on  the  part  of  the  thinking,  feeling, 
and  active  soul  is  insane  raving.  We  have  put 
the  Master  to  a  new  and  a  final  death,  but  in 
doing  this  we  have  slain  humanity.  The  pious 
reflection  that  we  go  and  die  with  him  is  super- 
fluous, for  by  the  terms  of  the  reasoning  we  are 
already  dead.  This  is  the  price  that  must  be 
paid  by  those  who  would  disprove  the  singular 
divinity  of  Jesus.  They  must  imitate  the  final 
act  of  Samson,  only  they  must  greatly  extend  the 
scope  of  it.  They  must  gather  into  the  house 
filled  with  the  hostile  conception,  crowded  with 


THE  LAW  OF  CONTRAST.  99 

the  haiiglity  historic  Philistinism,  our  entire  hu- 
manity ;  and  when  the  pillars  whereon  that  struc- 
ture stands  are  shaken,  when  that  temple  of  truth 
and  peace  is  pulled  to  the  ground,  the  only  being 
left  to  mourn  our  dead  race,  and  to  give  it  burial 
in  eternal  oblivion,  will  be  the  solitary  God  whose 
solitary  show  the  tragedy  is,  and  whose  desolate- 
ness  one  would  pity  if  one  could  recover  distinct 
existence  long  enough  to  exercise  commiseration. 

But  if  we  are  not  ready  to  aid  and  abet  this 
universal  suicide  on  the  part  of  mankind ;  if  we 
are  not  quite  prepared  to  empty  nature  of  its 
wonderful  variety,  and  human  life  of  its  endless 
differences ;  if  we  still  hold  that  fact  must  be  the 
guide  of  thought,  and  God's  order  the  stable 
foundation  of  all  philosophy;  if  we  continue  to 
assert  the  reality  and  worth  of  finite  beings,  —  we 
may  at  least  affirm  that  the  unique  divinity  of 
Jesus  is  possible.  This  may  be  the  meaning  of 
his  individuality,  the  significance  of  his  transcen- 
dence, the  root  of  that  mind  and  character  that 
are  absolute  for  mankind.  In  holding  to  the 
presence  in  the  living  universe  of  the  great  law  of 
contrast,  we  keep  open  the  foundation  for  the 
great  historic  faith. 

The  current  moods  toward  the  supreme  divinity 
of  Jesus  I  have  characterized  as  those  of  denial 
and  of  blindness.  What  shall  be  done  with  the 
negation,  and  how  shall  sight  be  recovered  to  the 
blind  ?    Shall  one  quietly  accept  the  limitations  of 


100      CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

our  generation,  and  attempt  to  run  one's  thought 
of  Christ  on  the  single  rail  of  its  far-reaching 
half  truth  ?  Shall  one  affirm  only  so  far  as  one 
may  anticipate  a  favorable  response,  telling  the 
souls  who  wish  to  go  farther,  who  long  for  the 
effulgence  of  the  Eternal  glory  and  the  impress 
of  his  substance  in  human  form  to  become  their 
Lord,  that  nothing  remains  for  them  but  unwin- 
nowed  tradition  and  blind  faith?  Or  shall  one 
take  a  position  just  the  opposite  of  that?  Shall 
one  boldly  contend  that  the  historic  faith  concern- 
ing the  Person  of  Christ  as  the  Eternal  Son  of 
God  rests  upon  the  higher  reason  of  mankind, 
and  that,  although  the  light  is  too  dazzling  to 
admit  of  utter  penetration,  one  can  behold  the 
various  highways  of  rational  inquiry  converging 
upon  and  terminating  in  the  inaccessible  splendor  ? 
This  seems  to  me  the  sound  position.  Rational- 
ism of  the  right  sort  is  the  very  life  of  theology, 
—  the  rationalism  that  does  not  create  a  universe, 
but  that  seeks  to  know  the  one  already  here ;  that 
does  not  wish  to  simplify  forces  and  persons  out 
of  existence ;  that  is  here  as  a  learner  and  thinker, 
and  not  in  the  role  of  a  creator;  that  keeps  its 
vision  upon  the  divine  fact ;  that  waits  at  its  prob- 
lem with  the  patience  inspired  by  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  endless  life,  and  by  the  sense  that  its 
problem  is  the  problem  of  humanity.  The  faith 
in  the  Trinity  rests  upon  reason  at  work  upon 
historic  fact.     The  doctrine  was  a  construction 


THE  TRINITY.  101 

of  the  mind  of  the  early  Christian  centuries,  the 
product  of  metaphysical  genius  unequaled  in  the 
history  of  the  church;  and  if  to-day  the  great 
conception  is  coming  up  for  re-discussion  and 
further  development,  it  is  because  that  concep- 
tion is  fundamental  not  only  to  the  Christian 
faith,  but  also  to  the  humanity  that  believes  in 
itself  as  made  in  the  image  of  God.  Whatever 
else  the  idea  of  the  Trinity  implies,  it  certainly 
means  that  being  and  knowledge  and  love,  exist- 
ence and  intelligence  and  character,  are  realities 
in  God ;  and  that  the  various  fundamental  forms 
of  society  in  the  earth,  the  essential  relationships 
of  humanity,  have  their  Archetype,  their  Eternal 
Pattern  and  Causal  Source,  in  the  nature  of  the 
Infinite.  Our  business  now,  however,  is  not  with 
this  high  theme,  but  with  various  lines  of  sugges- 
tion in  support  of  the  grand  historic  tradition  con- 
cerning Christ.  Still,  as  the  significance  of  the 
difference  in  Jesus  to  mankind  depends  upon  the 
difference  that  one  may  discover  in  God,  a  section 
of  this  discussion  must  be  given  to  that  vast  sub- 

iect. 

''  VI. 

Faith  exults  in  our  time  over  the  kinship  which 
it  beholds  between  God  and  man,  and  well  it 
may.  An  essential  community  of  being  between 
divinity  and  humanity  is  the  great  postulate  of  a 
reasonable  religion.  All  knowledge  of  God,  all 
profound  trust,  and  all  intelligent  worship  must 


102      CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

depend  upon  the  assumption  tliat  men  are  the 
children  of  the  Infinite.  Because  men  feel  that 
they  are  within  the  community  of  the  Divine 
Life,  they  are  sure  that  the  knowledge  of  God  is 
possible ;  also  absolute  trust  in  his  character,  and 
the  exultant  worship  of  his  perfection.  Out  of 
this  feeling  of  kinship  with  the  Eternal  is  at 
leno'th  elaborated  the  creat  belief  in  his  Person- 
ality:  from  this  fundamental  life  of  the  religious 
spirit  the  thought  at  last  takes  distinct  shape  that 
God  must  answer  to  man ;  that  he  must  be  self-con- 
scious and  self -determining ;  that  his  nature  must 
be  aware  of  itself,  and  must  be  its  own  guide. 
This  truth,  that  at  heart  the  divine  and  the  human 
are  one,  has  taken  tremendous  hold  of  this  cen- 
tury. Believers  feel  that  the  very  existence  of 
religion,  and  the  whole  rational  appeal  of  Chris- 
tianity, depend  upon  this  radical  affinity  between 
the  finite  spirit  and  the  Infinite.  They  go  far- 
ther. They  contend  that  without  this  assumption 
there  can  be  no  knowledge  of  the  real  world,  no 
science  and  no  philosophy.  The  life  of  science 
and  philosophy  and  faith  is  sustained  by  the  con- 
viction that  men  are  in  the  presence  of  a  real 
universe;  that  at  heart  it  is  akin  to  themselves, 
and  may  therefore  be  known  and  served  and 
trusted.  There  is  reason  nowhere  unless  there 
is  reason  everywhere. 

This  great  truth,  upon  which  depend  all  the 
higher  interests   of   mankind,  must  be   held   at 


COMPLEMENTARY  CONCEPTIONS.         103 

whatever  cost ;  but  there  must  be  added  to  it  that 
of  the  infinite  contrast  between  the  human  mind 
and  the  Mind  that  rules  the  universe.  The  two 
conceptions  are  complementary;  taken  singly, 
each  is  but  a  suicidal  half  truth.  The  principle 
of  identity,  carried  through  the  universe  as  its  sole 
law,  sinks  everything  in  the  abysses  of  an  abso- 
lute pantheism ;  the  principle  of  differences  pushed 
to  extremes  gives  us  an  atomic  world  where 
knowledge  and  morality  are  impossible,  and  where 
even  life  must  be  unconscious  and  blind.  It 
would  be  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  show 
the  danger  of  admitting  into  our  conception  of 
God  a  fundamental  law  of  contrast.  Use  this 
idea  by  itseK,  and  we  shall  have  the  metaphysics 
of  materialism,  the  ethics  of  pure  individualism, 
and  the  religion  of  despair;  use  it  exclusively, 
and  we  shall  have  a  God  utterly  transcendent, 
between  whom  and  humanity  there  must  remain 
a  great  gulf  fixed.  It  may  seem  to  many  a  most 
fatal  admission  for  a  writer  to  make.  Does  it 
not  follow  that  the  more  of  contrast  to  man  that 
one  believes  to  exist  in  God,  the  farther  must  He 
recede  from  human  interest  and  hope?  This 
must  follow  if  He  is  not  at  one  and  the  same  time 
the  immanent  and  transcendent,  the  infinitely 
near  and  the  infinitely  far;  it  will  be  inevitable 
if  we  fail  to  qualify  the  idea  of  contrast  with  the 
equally  essential  idea  of  kinship. 

One  may,  however,  take  for  granted  that,  in 


104      CHBIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

the  reigning  religious  thought  of  the  present,  the 
principle  of  identity  is  not  in  danger  of  being 
underestimated.  It  is  the  other  half  of  the  truth 
before  which  men  hesitate  and  deny.  It  is  gen- 
erally supposed  by  a  large  body  of  influential 
writers  that  the  very  idea  of  a  universe  excludes 
all  radical  contrast  from  the  nature  of  things, 
and  that  the  existence  of  a  reasonable  religion 
like  Christianity  carries  with  it  the  complete 
identity  of  the  divine  and  the  human.  How  little 
basis  there  is  for  this  sweeping  and  perilous  gen- 
eralization, I  now  propose  to  show  by  a  rapid 
consideration  of  that  which  is  fundamental  in  the 
faith  of  all  Christians,  the  personality  of  God. 
Without  attempting  the  definition  of  personality 
in  the  case  either  of  man  or  his  Maker,  there  are 
certain  attributes  of  personality,  universally  rec- 
ognized as  such  among  those  who  believe  in  it, 
which  will  be  our  guide  in  the  examination. 

Man  is  aware  of  his  own  life ;  he  is  a  self-con- 
scious being.  God  is  aware  of  his  life;  he  is 
a  self-conscious  Being.  Here  the  finite  and  the 
Infinite  are  at  one.  But  man's  consciousness  is 
limited  and  exclusive :  he  knows  himself  and  the 
world  and  God  truly,  but  only  in  part;  he  col- 
lects in  himself  no  more  than  the  merest  aspects 
of  the  great  triple  reality  of  the  soul  and  nature 
and  their  Creator.  Not  only  is  his  consciousness 
limited ;  it  is  also  exclusive.  The  final  secret  of 
thing-hood  and  creature-hood,  and  the  life  of  his 


THE  DIVINE  CONSCIOUSNESS.  105 

bretliren,  is  hidden  from  him,  and  the  core  of  his 
existence  is  concealed  from  them.  Man's  con- 
sciousness is  like  an  inland  sea ;  the  sea  is  largely 
exclusive,  shut  in  from  the  full  power  of  ocean 
movements,  and  with  access  embarrassed  to  the 
tides  from  without.  It  is  also  limited;  it  touches 
the  earth  beneath  and  the  shores  around  it,  and 
it  looks  up  into  the  heaven  above  it.  It  is  in 
communion  with  all  things  beneath  and  about 
and  above  it,  and  yet  the  communion  is  not  open ; 
it  is  rigidly  and  eternally  confined.  Here  is  the 
image  of  the  consciousness  of  man,  unable  to  re- 
veal its  own  secret,  and  unable  to  compass  the 
secret  of  other  hearts.  Man  touches  the  brute 
worlds  beneath  him,  he  stands  in  fellowship  with 
the  human  worlds  around  him,  he  looks  up  into 
the  divine  worlds  above  him.  He  is  in  a  real,  in- 
disputable communion  with  all  things;  yet  the 
distinctive  note  of  his  consciousness  is  its  limita- 
tion and  exclusiveness.  Now,  if  one  believes  at 
all  in  the  Divine  consciousness,  one  sees  instantly 
how  infinitely  different  it  must  be  at  this  point. 
All  things  are  in  God,  and  yet  are  not  to  be  con- 
founded with  God.  All  things,  all  creatures, 
and  in  a  true  sense  all  persons,  must  be  modes  of 
his  boundless  and  inclusive  consciousness.  God's 
omniscience  implies  access  to  the  heart  of  every- 
thing, —  implies  that  all  finite  existences  are  trans- 
parent to  his  thought,  that  they  are  all  and 
utterly  within  the  compass  of  his  mind.     One 


106      CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

cannot  shut  the  atmosphere  from  one's  home;  it 
comes  in  through  walls  of  every  thickness.  It 
goes  down  through  land  and  sea,  it  passes  through 
the  heart  of  the  earth,  and,  like  an  omnipresent 
intelligence,  encompasses  and  searches  the  whole 
globe.  Thus  the  Divine  consciousness  includes 
all  things,  and  sees  through  all  things.  I  repeat 
that  all  things,  all  creatures,  and  all  persons  are, 
in  a  true  sense,  modes  of  the  one  Infinite  con- 
sciousness. And  here  one  may  feel  the  entire 
credibility  of  the  Trinity,  if  historically  revealed. 
The  consciousness  of  God  carries  in  it  a  radical 
and  an  eternal  contrast  to  that  of  man.  It  has 
millions  and  millions  of  modes,  which  are  yet 
more  than  modes,  which  are  persons.  They  are 
jDart  of  it,  and  yet  are  distinct  from  it.  Why 
should  there  not  be  three  Eternal  Distinctions 
behind  all  these  multitudinous  temporal  distinc- 
tions? In  the  nature  of  the  case,  what  reason  is 
there  against  the  reality  of  an  eternal  threefold 
form  in  the  Godhead,  —  the  Father  and  the  Son 
and  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Life  and  the  Light  and 
the  Love  that  have  been  one  from  everlasting? 
One  cannot  judge  wholly  of  the  psychology  of 
God  from  the  psj^chology  of  man.  History,  as 
the  process  of  the  self -revelation  of  the  Infinite, 
must  be  brought  into  court.  If  that  shall  give 
its  authority  for  the  Trinitarian  conception  of  the 
Deity,  there  can  be  no  rational  objection  to  it 
from  the  consciousness  that  is  finite.     Contrast 


UNITY  OF  MENTAL  LIFE.  107 

there  must  be  between  the  intelligence  that  is 
limited  and  exclusive  and  the  Intelligence  that 
is  boundless  and  inclusive.  That  contrast  may 
include  the  socialism  in  the  Deity  which  is  the 
ground  of  humanity  in  the  earth. 

Another  great  attribute  of  personality  is  unity 
of  mental  life.  Men  commonly  think  of  person- 
ality through  this  function  of  it.  It  means  a 
force  and  a  result,  a  builder  and  a  fair  structure 
of  knowledge.  It  signifies  that  impressions  of 
the  outward  world,  all  memories  and  imagma- 
tions,  all  insights  and  thoughts,  are  compacted, 
organized  into  one  whole.  Oftener  than  anything 
else,  even  in  the  thought  of  exhaustive  thinkers, 
personality  means  the  presence  and  the  work  in 
knowledge  of  the  unifying  spirit.  But  in  man 
this  unity  is  only  potential;  it  is  never  actual. 
Our  sense-impressions  are  never  all  collected; 
they  are  constantly  falling  from  the  overcrowded 
mind,  as  the  fine  sand  escapes  from  the  over- 
crowded hand.  They  wait  at  the  doors  of  the 
five  senses  in  endless  lines,  and,  fast  as  one  may 
think,  swift  as  may  be  the  mental  admission  given 
to  sensations,  one  is  never  able  perceptibly  to 
diminish  the  length  of  the  line.  The  Infinite 
waits  upon  the  senses  for  a  mental  ticket-of -leave 
to  enter,  and  it  must  wait  forever.  The  number 
of  sensations  uncollected,  miorganized,  unnoticed, 
lost,  is  simply  countless.  Even  in  the  sphere  of 
sense,  man  moves  among  worlds  unrealized,  and 


108      CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

the  unity  of  his  mental  life  on  its  sensuous  side 
is  but  an  ideal.  When  one  passes  within  the 
smaller  compass  of  memory,  one  finds  the  same 
thing.  Here,  likewise,  the  mental  life  is  too  vast 
to  be  completely  marshaled.  Round  the  memories 
that  one  can  recall,  circling  the  definite  intellec= 
tual  life  that  one  can  reproduce,  is  the  horizon 
where,  in  vast  clouds,  fearful  and  beautiful,  rest 
immense  masses  of  past  experience.  They  are 
lying  there  in  lurid  or  splendid  haze,  terrible  as 
a  thunder-cloud,  gorgeous  as  an  autumnal  sunset, 
part  of  one's  being,  yet  too  far  off  to  be  com- 
manded, too  vast  to  be  comprehended.  The  same 
line  of  remark  holds  equally  true  of  one's  imagi- 
nations. In  the  common  mind,  they  are  like  the 
veering  uncertain  wind ;  in  the  intellect  of  genius, 
they  are  like  a  dance  of  stars.  What  unity  they 
have  is  a  mystery,  and  the  idea  of  putting  the 
total  under  mental  review  is  a  vain  dream.  And 
so  of  our  flashes  of  insight  and  of  our  elaborated 
thoughts.  One  can  never  bring  them  all  to- 
gether, or  work  them  into  a  complete  living,  self- 
conscious  whole.  Men  are  perpetually  escaping 
and  going  beyond  themselves;  they  run  out,  in 
the  uncomprehended  fullness  of  life,  into  the  Infi- 
nite. The  mental  life  of  the  best-trained  man  is 
like  a  piece  of  cloth  splendidly  woven  at  the  cen- 
tre, but  loose  on  both  sides  and  at  both  ends.  At 
the  centre  the  spirit  weaves  the  beautiful  fabric  of 
thought,  knits  it  well,  and  holds  it  fast ;  but  the 


ACTIVITY  AND  PEBSONALITY.  109 

sides  and  tlie  ends  are  always  raveled.  The  per- 
sonality of  man,  or  that  aspect  of  it  which  means 
the  unity  of  his  whole  psychic  life,  is  but  a  pro- 
phecy. In  God,  the  unity  which  we  look  for  in 
vain  in  the  hmnan  soul  is  alone  found.  God's 
total  history,  his  total  thought,  must  be  self-com- 
prehending. He  is  infinite  and  at  the  same  time 
absolutely  self -containing  The  greatness  of  this 
contrast  is  evident  enough.  The  value  of  it  for 
a  complete  doctrine  of  God  is  not  now  the  consid- 
eration that  I  would  press.  I  wish  to  emphasize 
the  fact  that  in  the  very  centre  of  the  identity 
between  God  and  man,  in  the  wondrous  unity 
implied  in  intellectual  life,  the  difference  is  infi- 
nite. It  is  the  difference  between  prophecy  and 
the  realization,  the  imperfect  and  the  perfect. 

This  difference  between  the  personality  of  God 
and  of  man  is  even  more  impressive  when  one 
considers  it  under  its  moral  aspect.  For,  after 
all,  moral  unity  is  the  heart  of  personality.  And 
here  surely  personality  is  hardly  to  be  found 
among  men.  They  are  a  kingdom  in  a  state  of 
civil  war,  a  continent  that  is  the  theatre  of  hosts 
of  contending  armies.  The  counter-movements 
of  desire,  the  terrible  rush  and  roar  where  the 
opposing  seas  of  passion  meet,  the  battle  among 
one's  thoughts  of  truth,  the  conflict  among  one's 
divinations  of  right,  and  the  yet  more  fatal  dual- 
ism between  what  one  is  and  what  one  knows  one 
should  be,  reduce  moral  personality  to  a  faith 


110      CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

and  a  daring  hope.  Where  in  this  wild  life  is 
actual  moral  personality?  Where  is  the  com- 
plete organization  of  thought  and  purpose  and 
passion  and  endeavor  that  one  must  have  in  a 
perfect  personality  ?  Both  in  its  intellectual  and 
moral  meaning,  and  as  standing  for  the  unity  and 
self -consistency  of  life,  personality  is  in  man  only 
potential.  He  has  the  sublime  capacity  for  it, 
and  his  task  is  the  realization  of  the  capacity. 
Man's  world  is  still  in  process  of  building,  and 
the  confusion  is  great;  and,  when  from  this  con- 
fusion in  the  human  soul  one  lifts  one's  vision  to 
the  moral  order  of  the  Divine  Life,  one  is  over- 
whelmed as  in  the  presence  of  an  eternal  contrast. 
There  one  sees  the  absolute  truth,  the  absolute 
right,  and  the  absolute  love;  the  thought  is  all 
true,  the  conscience  forever  clear  and  final,  the 
love  eternally  pure.  The  mental  and  moral  move- 
ment is  self -consistent,  self -comprehending,  entire 
and  eternal.  The  personality  of  God  is  the  only 
complete  personality  in  the  universe,  and  here 
aofain  one  beholds  the  contrast  between  the  human 
and  the  Divine.  As  Lotze  says  in  his  profound 
discussion,  "perfect  personality  is  in  God  only: 
to  all  finite  minds  there  is  allotted  but  a  pale 
copy  thereof;  the  finiteness  of  the  finite  is  not  a 
producing  condition  of  this  personality,  but  a  limit 
and  a  hindrance  of  its  development."  ^ 

Activity  is  another   attribute   of   personality, 

1  Microcosmus,  Book  IX.  ch.  iv.  p.  688. 


MAN  LOCAL:   GOD   UNIVERS^iL.  Ill 

and  it  clearly  belongs  both  to  man  and  bis  Maker ; 
but  once  more,  in  the  heart  of  another  identity, 
we  come  upon  a  fundamental  difference.  Man  is 
a  local  being,  provincial  by  his  very  nature.  He 
can  act  only  through  a  moment  of  time  and  at  a 
point  in  space.  Make  the  sphere  of  his  self- 
revealing  activity  as  large  as  one  may,  still  he 
remains  chained  to  particular  times  and  places. 
One  realizes  impressively  one's  weakness  and  lo- 
calism when  one  is  at  sea.  There  is  the  heaving 
and  unmeasured  deep  beneath  him,  and  sweeping 
away  on  every  side.  Our  Creator  has  sent  us  on  a 
mightier  voyage,  has  put  us  under  the  sublimest 
appeal  to  imagination  in  the  very  situation  of 
human  life.  Our  planet  carries  man  in  its  vast 
circuit  about  the  sun,  bears  him  onward  in  an 
endless  voyage,  sweeps  on  through  whole  seasons 
of  tumult  in  the  aerial  deep,  drives  forward 
through  the  glory  of  daybreak  and  the  splendors 
of  sundown,  gives  an  outlook  to  right  and  left  and 
overhead  into  the  shining  abysses  of  infinite  space, 
and,  through  every  variety  of  impressive  experi- 
ence in  its  magnificent  flight,  subjects  him  to  the 
feeling  of  his  weakness  and  provincialism.  He  is 
the  child  of  God,  but  he  is  chained  to  particu- 
lar times  and  seasons.  But  the  movements  of 
the  worlds  of  life  beneath  man,  the  vast  current 
of  human  history,  the  courses  of  the  stars,  the 
simultaneous  and  universal  march  of  nature  and 
spirit,  is  but  the  expression  of  the  omnipresent 


112      CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

Will.  In  the  philosophy  of  faith  one  must  not 
forget  the  localism  of  man  and  the  universalism 
of  God. 

We  have  thus  traced  a  few  of  the  phases  of  that 
infinite  difference  which  the  Eternal  must  ever 
present  to  mankind.  We  have  found  these  within 
the  holy  circles  of  community,  in  the  august  cen- 
tre of  personality  itseK.  Personality  implies  both 
in  God  and  in  man  self -consciousness,  mental  and 
moral  unity,  and  self-determination,  that  is,  a 
being  in  the  revelation  of  its  power;  but  in  con- 
sciousness, in  integrity,  and  in  activity  we  have 
beheld  infinite  contrasts.  Man  is  not  the  mea- 
sure of  God;  God  is  the  eternal  standard  and 
goal  for  man,  and,  while  he  strengthens  himself 
in  his  kinship  to  his  Creator,  he  must  not  forget 
that  the  whole  significance  and  task  of  his  exist- 
ence are  developed  in  the  presence  of  the  infinite 
contrast  between  the  perfect  and  the  imperfect.^ 

VII. 

The  supreme  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ  is  but 
the  sovereign  expression  in  human  history  of  the 
great   law   of    difference    in   identity   that   runs 

1  "For  we  must  of  necessity  hold  that  there  is  something 
exceptional  and  worthy  of  God  which  does  not  admit  of  any 
comparison  at  all,  not  merely  in  things,  but  which  cannot  even 
be  conceived  by  thought  or  discovered  by  perception,  so  that  a 
human  mind  should  be  able  to  apprehend  how  the  unbegotten 
God  is  made  the  Father  of  the  only  begotten  Son."  Origen, 
De  Principiis,  Book  I.  chap.  ii.  4. 


NEW  TESTAMENT  IDEA   OF  GOD.         113 

througli  the  entire  universe,  and  that  has  its  home 
in  the  heart  of  the  Godhead.  With  this  law  in 
our  thought,  we  dare  to  look  into  the  New  Testa- 
ment conception  of  God  as  the  Father  and  the 
Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit.  In  Him  we  find  eter- 
nally existing  the  Paternal,  the  Filial,  and  the 
Union  of  these  two.  Here  are  the  differences  in 
the  ineffable  community  of  the  Godhead.  Is  it 
not  conceivable  that  the  Filial  in  God  should  have 
been  in  union  with  Jesus  in  a  way  unparalleled 
and  inapproachable?  Surely  it  is  thinkable  and 
credible  that,  in  consequence  of  his  mission  and 
relation  to  the  world,  the  Deity  might  have  been 
the  basis  of  Christ's  being  in  a  manner  utterly 
singular,  and  that,  along  with  the  kinship  between 
him  and  us,  there  might  be  an  eternal  contrast. 
The  universe  is  the  work  of  God.  It  is  not  for 
us  to  say  what  shall  be  the  character  of  creation ; 
we  must  take  reality  as  we  find  it,  and  reverently 
seek  for  insight  into  its  mystic  depths.  The 
claim,  that  in  Jesus  there  is  a  imion  with  God 
absolutely  unique,  is  at  least  conceivably  sound 
and  true.  The  claim  cannot  be  disposed  of  with- 
out consideration,  it  cannot  be  dismissed  prior  to 
examination  of  the  fact.  Jesus  Christ  is  a  fact 
too  transcendent  to  be  accommodated  to  the  re- 
quirements of  a  given  philosophy.  The  scheme 
that  is  to  prevail,  that  is  not  doomed  to  a  disas- 
trous collision  with  reality,  must  grow  out  of  the 
historic   truth.       The   man  who  comes   forward 


114      CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

witli  a  programme  in  liis  hand,  according  to  which 
the  universe  must  be  ordered,  is  too  ambitious. 
His  task  is  too  great  for  him.  He  is  usurping  the 
place  of  creative  wisdom.  The  universe  is  already 
here,  ordered  in  terms  of  the  Eternal  Reason; 
and  history  is  already  here,  and  its  evolution  of 
the  character  of  the  Ultimate  Life,  and  man's 
duty  is  to  follow  the  path  of  the  great  revelation. 
The  assertion  that  Christ  cannot  be  very  God  of 
very  God,  in  a  sense  infinitely  beyond  what  may 
be  truthfully  said  of  all  other  human  beings,  is 
sheer  intellectual  presumption,  is  indeed  dogma- 
tism of  the  worst  kind. 

Our  great  faith  in  the  unique  divinity  of  Jesus 
is  then  possibly  true.  We  have  got  as  far  as  to 
say  that  the  fact  may  be  as  we  believe.  Can  we 
take  another  step  forward?  Let  us  at  least  make 
the  attempt.  A  man  should  go  courageously 
wherever  his  instinct  and  surmise  of  truth  lead. 
Some  one  asked  a  brave  soldier,  who  stood  for 
absolute  loyalty  to  his  commander  under  all  cir- 
cumstances, if  he  would  run  against  a  wall  under 
orders,  and  his  reply  was  that  he  assuredly  would. 
There  are  different  kinds  of  walls,  and  a  brave 
man  under  the  passion  of  duty  may  be  able  to  run 
through  a  troop  and  jumj)  over  a  wall;  he  may 
also  find  that  the  obstacle  is  only  imaginary,  and 
that  the  charge  upon  it  reveals  its  insubstantial 
character.  One  must  follow  his  surmise  of  truth : 
the  dog  has  his  scent  of  the  game,  and  man  has 


THE   ETERNAL    HUMANITY.  115 

his  divination  o£  fact ;  neither  can  ignore  without 
inevitable  failure  that  discerning,  insistent,  ulti- 
mate impulse. 

All  religious  philosophy  will  admit  that  in  God 
there  is  the  Eternal  Prototype  of  humanity.  All 
intelligent  religious  thinking  must  recognize  in 
the  Deity  an  eternal  basis  for  the  nature,  the  ad- 
vent, the  career  and  ideal,  of  mankind.  What 
possible  interest  can  human  beings  have  in  the 
Infinite  if  society  is  not  organized  out  of  his  life, 
if  He  is  not  the  ground  of  its  order  and  hope? 
What  do  we  mean  by  the  Being  in  whom  every 
fatherhood  in  heaven  and  in  earth  is  named,  if 
our  God  is  not  a  fullness  of  love,  if  He  is  not  in 
his  inmost  nature  an  eternal  society?  Is  there 
anything  in  the  Infinite  to  accoimt  for  humanity  ? 
That  is  the  deepest  question  in  religious  philoso- 
phy, and  thinkers  are  everywhere  converging  upon 
the  conclusion  that  in  God  there  is  the  Eternal 
Pattern  of  our  race.  And  what  is  this  Eternal 
Pattern,  or  Prototype,  but  the  Son  of  Man  of 
the  synoptic  gospels,  the  Only-begotten  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel,  the  Mediator  of  the  Pauline  Epis- 
tles, the  High  Priest  without  descent,  with  nei- 
ther beginning  of  days  nor  end  of  years,  of  the 
letter  to  the  Hebrews,  the  God  of  God,  Light  of 
Light,  begotten,  not  made,  of  the  Nicene  Creed, 
who  for  us  men  and  our  salvation  came  down,  was 
made  flesh,  and  became  man?  Granted  that  in  all 
these  phrases  there  is  an  effort  to  express  the  in- 


116      CHBIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

expressible,  a  framing  of  words  to  set  within  def- 
inite forms  the  unbounded  and  ineffable ;  granted 
that  the  terms  are  but  symbolic  in  their  force,  that 
they  but  hint  at  the  whole  unutterable  truth,  — 
the  question  comes.  Is  there  an  infinite  reality 
behind  the  human  symbol  ;  is  the  mental  effort 
and  result  a  trustworthy  witness  to  the  trans- 
cendent and  eternal  fact  ?  That  question  all  reli- 
gious philosophy  that  is  not  serving  as  its  own 
undertaker  must  answer  in  the  affirmative.  And 
the  point  in  Christology  for  the  faith  of  to-day  to 
master,  the  centre  round  which  the  whole  conflict 
of  opinion  is  raging,  is  the  special,  unique  rela- 
tion of  Jesus  Christ  to  this  Eternal  Prototype  of 
humanity  in  the  Godhead.  Here  is  where  we  are 
pressed  by  the  strong  Unitarian  thinker ;  here  is 
where  little  has  been  done,  in  the  form  of  definite 
and  conclusive  thinking,  to  arrest  his  onward 
march.  And,  while  the  liberal  hosts  are  press- 
ing forward,  the  orthodox  warriors  are  puzzled. 
Surrender  they  never  will ;  the  vital  interests  that 
are  still  renewed  out  of  the  bosom  of  Christ 
make  that  catastrophe  impossible.  But  they  see 
no  way  open  at  present  by  which  their  conviction 
of  the  transcendent  relation  of  Christ  to  God  can 
be  pushed  into  the  invincible  form  of  reason. 
Thus  we  see  our  difficulty;  we  are  sensible  of  our 
embarrassment;  we  recognize  our  problem,  and 
that  is  more  than  half  the  battle.  The  great 
point,  then,  to  be  determined  concerning  Jesus  is, 


ACTUAL    AND    IDEAL    SONSHIP.  117 

whether  he  is  the  supreme  and  unique  represent- 
ative of  the  humanity  of  God,  the  proper  incar- 
nation of  the  Filial  in  the  being  of  the  Infinite  ? 

Conviction  upon  this  point  can  result  only  from 
serious  study  of  the  character  of  Jesus.  In  the 
next  section  of  this  discussion  the  attempt  will  be 
made  to  indicate  the  ground  upon  which  such  a 
conviction  may  be  founded.  Here,  however,  let 
it  be  remarked  that,  as  we  study  Jesus  in  the  free- 
dom and  homage  of  true  science,  we  come  upon 
the  august  fact  that  so  penetrated  the  mind  of 
Horace  BushneU,  and  to  which  he  has  given  an 
expression  so  simple  and  magnificent,  the  unclas- 
sifiable  character  of  Christ.  Reason  has  no  place 
for  him  in  the  purely  human  categories,  unless 
these  are  made  the  forms  for  an  ideal  humanity. 
If  our  human  categories  are  the  conceptions  that 
cover  actual  human  existence,  Christ's  being  fills 
and  transcends  them ;  he  is  all  that  they  require, 
and  infinitely  more.  They  make  room  for  sin, 
and  moral  ignorance,  and  ethical  limitation  in 
every  direction,  and  the  general  sore  embarrass- 
ment to  which  all  human  beings  are  subject. 
They  make  no  room  for  complete  holiness,  abso- 
lute knowledge  of  moral  obligation,  utter  ethical 
integrity,  and  the  freedom  of  the  perfect  Son  of 
God.  The  prophetism  of  Jesus;  his  goodness, 
and  his  power  as  director  of  our  whole  higher  civ- 
ilization; his  thought,  his  character,  his  author- 
ity, —  cannot  be  put,   without  doing  violence  to 


118      CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

fact,  in  the  same  category  with  those  of  any  other 
leader  of  mankind.  There  is  in  the  Founder  of 
the  Christian  religion  a  recognizable,  a  demonstra- 
ble transcendence  of  the  actual  human  category. 
He  is  concerned  with  the  Deity,  implicated  in 
his  nature,  associated  with  his  purpose,  under  his 
will  and  spirit,  in  a  manner  secret,  inapproach- 
able, ineffable.  This  singularity  of  Christ  is  un- 
mistakable in  the  Gospels,  conspicuous  in  the 
Epistles,  and  conclusively  evident  over  the  whole 
field  of  more  than  eighteen  hundred  years  of 
Christian  experience  and  history.  The  form  of 
the  Son  of  Man  is  an  eternal  contrast,  set  in  with 
immortal  identities,  to  all  his  brethren.  For  the 
sake  of  the  identities  we  must  hold  to  the  con- 
trast. This  singularity  of  Christ  is  the  thing  to 
be  noted  to-day;  this  assurance  of  union  between 
God  and  humanity  from  the  Christ  who  repre- 
sents that  union  by  the  authority  of  a  relation 
aboriginal  and  ineffable ;  this  pledge  of  salvation, 
victorious  evolution,  or  whatever  name  may  be 
assigned  it,  from  the  Life  that  is  human,  and  at 
the  same  time  carries  into  history  the  secret  of 
the  Eternal  Mind.  This  singularity  of  our  Lord 
must  be  saved  for  the  sake  of  the  community  with 
mankind  that  rests  upon  it.  For  I  believe  that 
only  as  we  grasp  the  transcendent  relation  which 
Christ  sustains  to  God  can  we  retain  for  any 
length  of  time,  and  in  effective  living  form,  the 
other  mighty  insights  that  faith  has  won  through 


PHILOSOPHY   AND    HISTORY.  119 

Him.  Philosophy  working  upon  history  is  to-day 
able  to  reach  results  similar  to  those  revealed 
through  the  Person  of  Christ;  but  the  fact  must 
never  be  overlooked  that  philosophy  did  not  origi- 
nate the  mighty  truths  that  make  us  men.  These 
truths  were  made  known  to  our  race  by  a  vital 
process ;  they  were  brought  forth  by  the  sore  tra- 
vail of  history.  And  philosophy  must  always  be 
tried  at  the  bar  of  history ;  the  grand  integrity  of 
the  historic  reality  must  never  be  surrendered  to 
an  imperious  speculative  scheme.  Lose  out  of 
faith  the  sense  of  the  Eternal  in  Christ,  fail  to 
recognize  in  Him  the  presence  of  the  Absolute, 
miss  the  fact  that  his  nature  is  rooted  in  the 
Deity  and  is  part  of  the  nature  of  God,  and  we 
let  go  the  sole  adequate  support  for  belief  in  the 
consubstantiation  of  humanity  with  divinity,  and 
the  consciousness  that  Jesus  is  the  moral  ideal 
for  mankind.  The  Christ  who  embodies  the  deep- 
est in  God,  who  incarnates  the  Eternal  Filial 
in  the  Infinite,  is  essential  to  hold  for  the  world 
the  great  convictions  of  the  kinship  between  man 
and  his  Maker,  and  the  presence  in  Jesus  of  the 
true  and  final  standard  of  human  life.  If  the 
difference  in  Christ  to  humanity  is  the  difference 
of  the  very  God,  then  we  can  believe  that  the 
identity  in  Christ  to  our  race  is  the  identity  of 
the  very  God.  But  if  the  contrast  in  the  Lord 
to  mankind  does  not  reach  to  the  being  of  God, 
if  it  is  not  the  manifestation  of  the  Eternal,  if  it 


120      CHRIST  m  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

is  only  individual  idiosyncracy,  the  mere  separate, 
high-colored  envelope  in  which  his  humanity 
comes  into  the  world  and  preserves  its  secrets 
from  the  vulgar  crowd  with  whom  it  must  be 
thrown  together,  then  it  follows  inevitably  that 
the  kinship  of  Christ  to  his  brethren  does  not 
carry  us  to  the  heart  of  the  universe,  does  not  go 
beyond  the  bounds  of  space  and  time.  Only  a 
Christ  whose  antithesis  to  humanity  means  the 
presence  of  the  very  God  can  by  his  union  with 
humanity  assure  us  of  imion  with  God.  Discredit 
the  infinite  difference,  and  we  must  doubt  the 
sublime  identity.  This  contention  will  be  self- 
evident  to  those  who  see  that  we  owe  our  faith  in 
the  humanity  of  God  and  in  the  divinity  of  man, 
not  primarily  to  philosophy,  but  to  the  power  of 
the  historic  process.  Revelation  is  ever  through 
life,  the  apprehension  of  the  Infinite  Personality 
through  the  finite;  philosophy  comes  afterwards 
and  finds  her  task.  If  we  take  Christ  out  of  the 
historic  process  of  revelation,  we  decapitate  faith 
in  the  humanness  of  God  and  the  divineness  of 
man.  We  must  remember  the  rock  whence  our 
belief  was  hewn,  the  pit  whence  it  was  dug.  It 
was  not  in  the  world  prior  to  Christ  except  in 
the  form  of  intermittent  prophetic  dream,  limited 
religious  intuition,  or  vague,  ineffectual  j)hilo- 
sophic  fancy.  It  was  not  here  as  the  ruling  force 
in  human  civilization.  The  consubstantiation  of 
man  with    God   is   the   accepted   and   moulding 


THE   BASIS    OF   FAITH.  121 

belief  of  Christendom  to-day  because  of  the  reve- 
lation of  the  nature  both  of  God  and  man  made 
through  Jesus  Christ.  Our  whole  higher  faith  is 
based  upon  the  conviction  that,  inasmuch  as  the 
contrast  in  him  to  mankind  means  the  contrast 
of  the  Absolute,  the  kinship  in  him  to  our  race 
signifies  the  kinship  of  the  Absolute,  The  his- 
toric process  to  which  we  owe  our  working  and 
effectual  faith  may  be  said  to  consummate  its 
service  to  the  human  spirit  in  the  great  declara- 
tion that  the  difference  of  Christ  to  mankind  is 
the  difference  of  God,  and  the  identity  of  Christ 
to  our  race  is  the  identity  of  God.  When  we 
ascend  into  the  being  of  the  Infinite  upon  the 
difference,  we  can  with  confidence  descend  into 
hiunanity  upon  the  identity. 

Once  more  let  the  question  be  put,  Upon  what 
do  we  build  our  belief  in  the  essential  correspond- 
ence between  the  Divine  and  the  hiunan?  Is  it 
a  mere  venturesome  dream  and  nothing  more? 
Is  it  a  deduction  from  the  anthropomorphism  es- 
sential to  human  thought  in  all  its  forms?  Is  it 
an  intuition  into  the  moral  worth  of  the  soul  in  re- 
lation to  the  moral  order  of  the  universe  ?  These 
all  have  much  to  do  with  it.  The  venturesome 
dream,  the  moral  intuition,  and  the  philosophical 
deduction  have  all  been  concerned  in  the  history 
of  the  faith.  But  the  faith  acquired  consistency 
and  authority  only  through  Christ;  he  found  it 
but  a  vague  and  powerless  conception,  he  left  a 


122      CHEIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

fundamental  certainty.  I  believe  that  tlie  con- 
ception tliat  man  is  the  child  of  the  Infinite  will 
have  the  saddest  fortune,  and  indeed  remain  in 
utter  impotence,  unless  the  Prototype  of  humanity 
lying  eternally  in  the  Godhead  shall  appear  in 
an  historic  personality  to  vindicate  the  daring 
thought.  The  dream,  intuition,  philosophical  de- 
duction, or  whatever  name  one  may  give  it,  has 
never  been  able,  and  it  is  hard  to  see  that  it  can 
ever  be  able,  apart  from  the  high  appreciation  of 
the  historic  Christ,  to  support  for  any  length  of 
time,  on  a  wide  scale  and  under  forms  of  control- 
ling influence,  faith  in  the  essential  sonship  of  all 
men  to  God,  and  in  the  obligation  resting  upon 
human  beings  here  and  now  to  live  the  transcend- 
ent life.  Without  philosophy,  history  lies  in  con- 
fusion ;  and  without  history,  philosophy  is  insane. 
The  Incarnation  is  the  assertion  of  the  divine 
meaning  of  history,  and  the  vindication  of  the 
high  calling  of  philosophy;  but  history  and  phi- 
losophy in  denial  of  the  Eternal  Christ  lose  all 
high  seriousness,  and  become  little  more  than 
"soimd  and  fury." 

VIII. 

The  path  to  this  eternal  contrast  between 
Christ  and  all  the  other  sons  of  God  is  his  per- 
fect humanity.  There  is  in  Christ  the  note  of 
moral  comj^leteness,  and  the  root  of  this  must  be 
his  unique  relation  to  the  Deity.     There  is,  indeed, 


TRANSCENDENCE    OF   MIND.  123 

a  transcendence  in  tlie  verj  nature  of  man,  and 
here  again  Christ  differentiates  himself  from 
humanity  out  of  the  heart  of  a  great  identity. 
Man's  intelligence  is  supernatural  in  its  origin. 
Heredity  and  environment  can  do  much,  but  they 
cannot  originate  mind.  The  impressiveness  of 
genius,  descending,  as  it  so  often  does,  from  a 
poor  parentage,  and  rising  up  amid  the  least 
stimulating  surroimdings,  is  overpowering  from 
this  point  of  view.  One  might  be  tempted  to 
believe  that  mind  is  wholly  the  product  of  hered- 
ity and  circumstances,  were  it  not  for  the  reve- 
lation which  genius  makes,  when  it  starts  up  in 
full  splendor,  amid  the  darkest  conditions.  One 
looks  at  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  one  sees  that  his 
intellectual  power  cannot  be  accounted  for  by 
simply  regarding  him  as  the  child  of  his  mother, 
the  son  of  his  father,  and  the  product  of  his  cir- 
cumstances. These  in  no  w^ay  account  for  the 
man:  they  contradict  at  all  points  the  character 
of  the  phenomenon ;  they  make  it  impossible  for 
the  impartial  historian  to  believe  that  such  a 
mind  should  have  come  from  such  a  source.  One 
of  the  first  statesmen  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  one  of  the  wisest  and  strongest  rulers  that 
ever  shaped  the  destinies  of  a  great  people,  has  in 
his  parentage  and  circumstances  absolutely  no- 
thing to  account  for  his  intellectual  power.  The 
same  is  ti'ue  of  many  another  man  of  genius. 
Kobert  Burns  had  an  eminently  respectable  an- 


124      CHBIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

cestry,  but  one  looks  in  vain  in  it  for  any  hint  of 
the  poet's  gifts.  Those  eyes  that  saw  into  the 
world's  heart,  and  that  read  with  unerring  vision 
and  sympathetic  passion  the  great  secrets  of  hu- 
man love,  and  that  voice  which  set  them  to  the 
music  of  words  that  will  ring  down  the  grooves  of 
time  to  their  farthest  limit,  carry  one  into  the  su- 
pernatural for  their  explanation.  It  must  never 
be  forgotten  that  Shakespeare  was  the  son  of  a 
very  humble  father.  The  greatest  genius  of  the 
modern  world  had  his  birth  in  little  Stratford-on- 
Avon,  and  again  it  is  simple  mockery  to  try  to 
account  for  him  upon  the  naked  j^rinciples  of 
heredity  and  environment.  Such  an  explanation 
is  an  insult  to  the  common  sense  of  mankind. 
Thus  the  greatest  service  of  genius,  appearing  as 
the  child  of  lowly  parentage  and  amid  humble 
circumstances,  is  the  proclamation  of  its  high 
origin  in  the  eternal  world.  It  becomes,  in  the 
second  place,  a  revelation  of  the  source  of  our 
common  humanity  in  the  same  supersensible 
realm.  By  its  grand  antithesis  to  ordinary  hu- 
man endowment,  genius  is  strong  enough  to  show 
its  own  origin,  and  the  origin  of  its  humbler 
brethren,  in  the  wisdom  of  God.  Genius  is 
rooted  in  a  vast  identity  with  common  men ;  but 
out  of  the  heart  of  this  kinship  grows  a  difference 
equally  vast  and  irreducible. 

The  same  line  of  remark  applies  to  the  distinc^ 
tion   of   sainthood.     The    old   question   returns, 


LIMIT    OF   ENVIRONMENT.  125 

Can  any  good  thing  come  out  of  Nazareth?  No; 
it  is  impossible.  Environment  cannot  originate 
goodness ;  at  its  best,  environment  is  but  the  con- 
dition of  character,  it  can  never  produce  it.  The 
great  effort  to-day  all  over  the  civilized  world  is 
after  a  purified,  a  transformed  environment,  and 
with  that  endeavor  every  noble  man  must  be  in 
deepest  sympathy.  By  all  means  let  us  seek 
beautiful  homes  for  our  fellow -men  who  are  doing 
so  much  of  the  hardest  and  most  essential  work 
of  the  world,  and  let  us  surround  them  with  the 
best  possible  physical,  intellectual,  moral,  and 
political  conditions.  Let  us  have  the  noblest 
domestic  economy,  the  finest  schools,  the  wisest 
and  strongest  government,  the  forms  of  industrial 
life  that  are  the  nearest  practicable  approach  to 
fairness,  and  let  us  everywhere  strengthen  the 
moral  and  spiritual  power  of  the  church.  Hu- 
manity has  had  odds  against  its  intelligence  and 
virtue  far  too  long;  the  sea  has  been  too  stormy 
for  the  craft  that  has  had  to  weather  it.  A  great 
deal  more  can  be  done  to  soften  the  conditions  of 
human  existence  than  even  our  noblest  dreams 
imply,  and  still  the  race  have  enough  left  of  re- 
sisting residuum  for  the  development  of  the  moral 
life.  It  is  not  the  gospel  of  an  improved  environ- 
ment that  one  fears :  it  is  the  irrational  hope  that 
grows  up  under  its  protection.  Environment,  at 
its  best,  cannot  create  love.  Goodness  is,  again, 
super  sensuous  and  divine  in  its  origin.     Nothing 


126      CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

good  can  come  out  of  Nazareth  even  when  con- 
formed to  the  character  of  the  city  of  God. 
Goodness  must  come,  if  it  is  to  come  at  all,  out 
of  the  personal  will  in  surrender  to  the  Eternal 
Will,  out  of  the  finite  sovd  in  the  struggle  inspired 
and  supported  by  the  Infinite  Soul.  The  first 
service  of  sainthood  is  that  it  proclaims  its  own 
transcendence ;  it  is  not  of  this  world.  Its  second 
service  is  that  it  shows  that  all  moral  life  is  tran- 
scendent. Goodness  is  born  out  of  the  Infinite 
through  the  choice  and  love  and  victorious  strug- 
gle of  the  faithful  human  spirit.  All  intelli- 
gence and  all  high  character  are  transcendent, 
'  and  have  their  source  in  the  mind  and  heart  of 
God. 

Now  it  is  in  the  range  of  Christ's  transcendence 
of  his  earthly  conditions  that  we  note  the  com- 
plete uniqueness  of  his  Person.  The  mere  fact 
of  the  transcendence  of  earthly  conditions  joins 
him  to  the  race  of  which  he  is  the  perfect  speci- 
men; the  extent  and  character  of  this  transcend- 
ence call  for  a  deeper  origin  in  God  for  him 
than  for  the  rest  of  mankind.  We  speak  of  the 
difference  that  he  presents  to  all  other  men  as 
being  simply  one  of  degree,  and  we  are  thus  mis- 
led by  a  word.  All  real  difference  is  a  differ- 
ence in  kind;  the  tests  of  more  and  less  do  not 
cover  the  case.  The  fact  is,  they  are  qualitative 
as  well  as  quantitative.  The  given  quantity  and 
the  specified  quality  are  unlike,  are  different,  and 


CHEISTS    TRANSCENDENCY.  127 

the  difference  is  real.  It  is  a  question  of  posses- 
sion and  non-possession.  The  stone  that  weighs 
a  ton  has  weight,  but  it  has  not  the  weight  of  the 
stone  of  one  hundred  tons.  The  difference  is  an 
ultimate  fact,  and  all  real  difference  is  a  differ- 
ence in  kind.  One  thing  possesses  it,  and  an- 
other does  not;  one  person  has  it,  while  another 
is  without  it.  "Likeness  "  is  a  word  for  the  bond 
of  union  between  the  unlike,  and  "difference"  is 
a  term  for  the  absolute  individuality  of  beings 
that  are  forever  akin.  There  are  two  laws  in 
creation,  two  in  the  nature  of  God,  and  the  dif- 
ference in  the  universe,  wherever  it  is  real,  is  as 
important  as  the  identity.  We  cannot  maintain 
the  world  in  which  we  live,  we  shall  destroy  its 
fair  order,  unless  we  combine  both  in  thought 
and  in  activity  the  two  eternal  principles  of  kin- 
ship and  contrast.  And  thus  we  are  brought 
back  to  the  Christ  who  is  one  with  all  men  and 
yet  different.  His  transcendence,  while  it  reveals 
the  transcendence  of  all  intelligence  and  all  moral 
love,  appears  of  such  range  and  character  as  to 
set  itself  apart  from  that  of  all  his  brethren.  It 
is  an  obvious  fact  that  Nazareth  cannot  account 
for  Christ;  we  see  at  once  that  the  mere  earthly 
conditions  of  heredity  and  environment  can  in 
no  single  case  explain  the  fact  either  of  intelli- 
gence or  sainthood.  But  with  the  intelligence 
and  character  of  Christ  before  us,  revealed  through 
his  thou^'ht  and  his  service,  we  a'o  further.     We 


128      CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

affirm  that  the  Eternal  is  under  a  unique  relation 
and  exercise  in  the  production  of  him.  In  his 
age  Jesus  stands  alone;  there  are  no  conditions 
of  ancestry  or  circumstances  that  can  possibly 
account  for  him.  All  men,  either  in  their  ra- 
tional endowment  or  in  their  moral  character,  or 
in  both,  transcend  time;  but  Christ  alone  tran- 
scends all  time.  His  thought  after  two  thousand 
years  needs  no  revision.  His  conceptions  of  God, 
of  man,  and  human  society  are  ultimate  concep- 
tions; intellectual  power  cannot  go  beyond  them, 
can  never  even  master  their  entire  content.  His 
spirit  has  upon  it  the  mark  of  finality,  his  char- 
acter is  the  full  impression  upon  humanity  of  the 
moral  perfection  of  the  Deity.  The  ultimate- 
ness  of  Christ's  thought  and  the  finality  of  his 
spirit  differentiate  his  transcendence  from  that 
of  the  greatest  and  best  of  mankind,  and  ground 
his  being  in  the  Godhead  in  a  way  solitary  and 
supreme. 

Not  only  is  there  in  our  Lord  the  absence  of 
{  defect;  there  is  also  complete  realization  of  ideal 
manhood.  In  any  adequate  view  of  him,  the 
negative  toward  sin  must  be  supplemented  with 
the  positive  toward  righteousness.  Peter  stood 
in  his  presence  and  cried,  "Depart  from  me,  for 
I  am  a  sinful  man,  O  Lord."  ^  The  relation  here 
is  of  the  sinful  to  the  sinless ;  and  as  the  apostle 
stood  to  his  Master,  so  all  suceeding  generations 

^  Luke  V.  8. 


THE  CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  SIN.  129 

of  noble  men  liave  felt  in  tlie  same  august  pres- 
ence. It  is  impossible  to  enter  the  domain  of 
Chrii?t's  teaching  without  instant  apprehension  of 
the  immeasurable  moral  difference  presented  to 
the  spirit  that  even  the  best  men  carry  there. 
There  is  no  need  of  preaching.  The  conscience 
of  each  man,  the  conscience  of  each  age,  the  con- 
science of  the  world,  instantly  finds  and  reports 
the  contrast,  and  in  its  name  brings  into  human 
life  the  moral  rebuke  of  the  Infinite.  The  intro- 
duction of  men  to  Christ  has  ever  been  accom- 
panied on  their  part  with  feelings  of  utter  un- 
worthiness.  The  sense  of  correction  that  Christ 
imparts,  the  consciousness  of  defect  and  unwor- 
thiness  that  he  elicits,  and  the  shadow  of  moral 
failure  under  which  they  live  who  are  nearest  to 
him,  reveal  something  that  we  do  well  to  con- 
sider. The  consciousness  of  sin  is  largely  the 
creation  of  Christ.  Men  like  Paul,  and  Lu- 
ther, and  Edwards  show  this  most  impressively. 
Their  sense  of  the  error  and  corruption  of  life  is 
born  in  the  Lord's  presence,  it  is  deepened  with 
the  progress  of  the  years,  and  to  the  last  they  are 
distressed  with  the  defect  of  existence  that  Christ's 
character  inevitably  discovers.  The  consciousness 
of  sin  that  fills  our  Western  civilization,  that  is 
deepest  in  the  noblest  spirits,  is  but  the  stern 
report  of  the  moral  contrast  that  our  Master  pre- 
sents to  the  world  even  at  its  best.  The  moon  at 
the  full  is  but  a  hemisphere  of  light ;  the  obverse 


130       CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF   TO-DAY. 

side  is  a  hemisphere  of  darkness.     The  half  that 
lies  in  the  great  illmnination  must  make  the  half 
that  lies  in  unrelieved  gloom  terribly  aware  of 
itself.     Men  standing  in  the  glory  of   Christ's 
character  often  look  as  if  they  were  as  radiant 
as  he;  but  the  splendor  is  borrowed,  and,  besides, 
it  covers  only  the  side  of  life  that  is  turned  to- 
ward him.     There  is  another  side  to  every  life, 
—  the  half  that  is  turned  away  from  the  Lord,  the 
vast  obverse  of  our  humanity  that  rolls  on  in 
Christless  gloom.     And  the  brightness  that  falls 
from   their  Master  upon  part  of  their  character 
makes  his  best  disciples  feel  the  horror  of  great 
darkness  in  which  so  much  of  their  being  moves. 
We  see  Christ  in  Gethsemane  in  his  agony  and 
bloody  sweat.     It  is  the  most  momentous  hour  in 
human  history.     It  is  the  crisis  that  is  to  show 
the  essential  nature   of   the    spirit    under   trial. 
Beside   Jesus  are  the  elect  of   his    disciples,  — 
Peter,  James,  and  John.     It  is  also  the  supreme 
hour  in  their  lives,  —  the  emergency  that   is  to 
reveal  their  inmost  character.     What  now  is  the 
issue  of  the  common  trial  ?     When  the  world  was 
most  in  need  of  a  loyal  Master,  and  when  loyalty 
cost  an  unspeakable  price,  Christ  was  true ;  when 
the  Master  was  most  in  need  of  friendship,  and 
when  friendship  was  made  easy  and  almost  inev- 
itable by  the  tender  solicitation  of  the  sublime 
sufferer,  his  disciples  were  false.     It  is  no  injus- 
tice to  say  that,  taking  life  as  a  whole,  and  includ- 


MAN'S    INCOMPLETENESS.  131 

ing  motive  as  well  as  conduct,  spirit  no  less  tlian 
behavior,  here  we  have  the  difference  between 
Christ  and  humanity.  We  note  the  community 
in  temptation;  we  must  also  note  the  eternal 
difference  in  the  issue.  As  Christ  was  to  his 
elect  disciples  in  the  hour  of  their  common  crisis, 
so  is  Christ  to  mankind.  There  is  an  identity 
divinely  significant,  but  it  rests  upon  a  difference 
as  deep  as  the  perfection  of  God. 

And  even  if  we  anticipate  the  time  when  the 
relation  of  the  disciple  to  his  Master  shall  no 
longer  be  that  of  the  sinful  to  the  sinless  and 
holy,  we  simply  come  upon  a  new  and  finer  form 
of  the  eternal  contrast.  For  the  relation  of  the 
soul  to  Christ  will  forever  be  that  of  the  imper- 
fect to  the  perfect,  the  incomplete  to  the  com- 
plete. Incompleteness  must  be  the  note  of  our 
human  existence  through  all  time.  We  follow 
on  to  know  the  Lord.  The  spring  and  zest  of 
our  life  are  here.  We  follow  the  Lamb  whither- 
soever he  goeth.  His  perfection  is  the  goal  at 
which  our  imperfection  aims ;  his  fullness  is  that 
upon  which  humanity's  defect  forever  draws. 
This  is  the  central  truth  of  the  Transfiguration. 
That  great  scene  has  first  a  factual  life,  and  then 
a  prophetic.  It  is  first  of  all  the  revelation,  in 
the  midst  of  his  humiliation,  of  the  moral  perfec- 
tion that  dwelt  in  Christ.  It  is  the  discovery  of 
the  unutterable  splendor  of  goodness  that  lived 
in  him,  the  infinite  reserve  of  his  being,  —  that 


132      CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

reserve  upon  wliicli  the  cliurcli  in  all  subsequent 
times  was  to  draw,  and  which  was  to  remain  under 
that  drain  without  the  shadow  of  reduction.  One 
cannot  study  this  scene  without  feeling  that  the 
moral  glory  has  its  source  in  a  difference  of 
being  that  goes  back  into  the  Godhead;  that  the 
awful  reserve  of  life,  for  a  moment  uncovered,  is 
the  evidence  of  a  transcendent  nature ;  that  here 
indeed  we  have  the  manifestation  of  the  Deity 
in  Christ.  This  is  the  factual  side,  the  actual 
disclosure  of  the  fathomless  glory  of  the  Lord. 
There  is,  how^ever,  the  prophetic  side.  The  Mas- 
ter and  his  disciples  upon  Tabor  are  not  to  each 
other  as  the  divine  and  the  human,  but  as  the 
perfect  and  the  imperfect.  For  it  is  the  high 
destiny  of  mankind  to  go  on  after  this  goodness, 
to  compass  more  and  more  of  it,  and  to  gather 
into  its  heart  an  ever  larger  measure  of  the  excel- 
lence of  Christ.  What  Christ  is  in  complete 
realization,  that  humanity  is  prophetically;  he  is 
the  perfect  humanity  after  which  we  must  forever 
strive,  and  short  of  which  we  must  forever  fall. 
The  difference  between  Jesus  and  his  disciples 
upon  Mount  Tabor  is  again  the  difference  between 
him  and  mankind.  It  is  the  difference  between 
complete  realization  and  immortal  prophecy. 
And,  again,  the  moral  contrast  is  the  sign  of  the 
fact  that  Christ's  being  has  a  relation  to  God 
transcendent  and  unique.  It  was  the  vision  of 
the  endless  perfection  of  Jesus  that  for  Athana- 


MANIFOLDNESS  OF  CHRIST.  133 

sius  set  him  apart  from  the  world,  while  it 
brought  him  infinitely  near.  "And,  in  a  word," 
to  quote  another  striking  passage  from  the  work 
of  that  acute  and  serious  mind,  "the  achievements 
of  the  Saviour,  resulting  from  his  becoming 
man,  are  of  such  kind  and  number  that,  if  one 
should  wish  to  enumerate  them,  he  may  be  com- 
pared to  men  who  gaze  at  the  expanse  of  the  sea 
and  wish  to  count  its  waves.  For  as  one  cannot 
take  in  the  whole  of  the  waves  with  his  eyes,  for 
those  that  are  coming  on  baffle  the  sense  of  him 
that  attempts  it,  so  for  him  that  would  take  in 
all  the  achievements  of  Christ  in  the  body,  it  is 
impossible  to  take  in  the  whole,  even  by  reckon- 
ing them  up,  as  those  which  go  beyond  his  thought 
are  more  than  those  he  thinks  he  has  taken  in. 
Better  is  it,  then,  not  to  aim  at  speaking  of  the 
whole,  where  one  cannot  do  justice  even  to  a  part, 
but,  after  mentioning  one  more,  to  leave  the 
whole  for  you  to  marvel  at.  For  all  alike  are 
marvelous,  and  wherever  a  man  turns  his  glance 
he  may  behold  on  that  side  the  divinity  of  the 
Word,  and  be  struck  with  exceeding  great  awe."  ^ 
We  come,  then,  to  the  great  conclusion  that 
that  which  seems  to  put  the  Master  on  a  level 
with  mankind  —  the  fact  that  he  is  the  moral 
ideal  of  the  world  —  is  indeed  the  chief  sign  of 
his  differentiation  from  the  human  race.  That 
Christ  should  be  the  acknowledged  moral  ideal 

^  The  Incarnation,  cli.  liv.  4,  5. 


134      CHRIST  IN    THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY, 

means  nothing  else  than  the  unattainableness  of 
his  goodness,  the  utter  perfection  of  his  charac- 
ter. The  ethical  significance  of  Christ  is  infinite. 
And  this  infinitude  of  Christ  is  not  a  dream  from 
the  brain  of  a  devotee,  it  is  the  sublime  assertion 
of  history;  it  is  the  meaning  of  the  unattainable 
,  moral  idealism  of  which  he  is  the  living  embodi- 
'  ment.  For  the  moral  goal  must  ever  be  a  flying 
goal;  the  standard  to  which  we  are  to  grow  must 
be  ever  rising;  the  type  to  which  we  are  to  be 
conformed  must  have  in  it  inexhaustible  fullness. 
Paul  is  affirming  the  essential  infinitude,  the  true 
deity  of  Christ,  when  he  says,  "I  press  on,  if  so 
be  that  I  may  apprehend  that  for  which  also  I 
was  apprehended  by  Christ  Jesus.  Brethren,  I 
count  not  myself  yet  to  have  apprehended:  but 
one  thing  I  do,  forgetting  the  things  which  are 
behind,  and  stretching  forward  to  the  things 
which  are  before,  I  press  on  toward  the  goal  unto 
the  prize  of  the  high  calling  of  God  in  Christ 
Jesus."  ^  The  goal  is  the  flying  goal;  th^  high 
calling  is  ever  lifting  itself  into  the  infinite  heights 
of  God  in  Christ  Jesus.  We  behold  Paul  in  his 
eager,  swift,  unresting  pursuit  of  the  highest  in 
Christ,  and  at  the  end  we  hear  him  speaking  of 
the  far-off  crown  of  righteousness  to  which  he 
looks  forward  in  inspired  wonder  as  the  incentive 
and  reward  of  his  heroic  endeavor.  We  behold 
the  Christian  centuries  pursuing  Christ.     Genera- 

1  Philippians  iii  12-14. 


CHRIST  THE  MORAL  IDEAL.  135 

tion  after  generation  of  exalted  spirits  have  beheld 
in  Christ  the  supreme  beatitude  of  existence. 
They  have  sought  to  compass  it  by  the  most  eager 
and  strenuous  toil.  They  have  found  unspeak- 
able good;  but  their  final  confession  has  ever 
been  of  the  inexhaustible  fullness  in  Christ.  Thus 
the  chase  of  the  centuries  after  Christ,  this  noble 
pursuit  with  its  eternal  failure  to  overtake  or 
even  approach  the  receding  and  growing  splendor, 
is  the  most  moving  and  amazing  proclamation  of 
the  infinitude  of  our  Lord.  The  moral  ideal  for 
mankind  that  he  is,  and  that  seems  to  so  many 
to  put  him  on  a  level  utterly  human,  becomes 
the  sign  of  his  eternal  difference  from  our  race 
and  lifts  him  into  identity  of  being  with  God. 
That  our  Lord  is  the  moral  ideal  of  humanity 
implies  these  two  things,  —  that  he  is  one  with 
humanity,  and  that  he  transcends  it  infinitely. 
It  implies  that  upon  the  difference,  the  deity  in 
his  nature,  rest  the  other  imperishable  truths,  — 
the  kinship  between  God  and  man,  and  the  pres- 
ence in  history  of  the  moral  ideal  of  the  world.  In 
that  wonder  of  modern  skill,  the  Forth  Bridge,  the 
mighty  span  of  seventeen  hundred  feet  is  sprung 
from  pillars  sunk  deep  in  the  heart  of  the  earth. 
One  looks  upon  the  vast  superstructure;  one 
beholds  ships  of  any  reach  of  mast  sailing  under 
the  arch  dwarfed  into  insignificance ;  one  sees  the 
swift  passage  from  limit  to  limit  of  the  traffic 
and  travel  of  the  Island ;  one  takes  in  the  utility 


136      CHRIST  IN   THE  FAITH  OF  TO-DAY. 

and  majesty  of  the  stupendous  structure,  and  then 
asks  u23on  what  does  all  this  rest  ?  For  an  answer 
to  that  question,  one  must  follow  the  arch  to  the 
water's  edge;  one  must  pierce  below  the  floods. 
Down  there  out  of  sight,  hidden  in  the  bed  of 
the  river,  resting  upon  the  bosom  of  the  earth,  are 
the  sunken  pillars  that  hold  aloft  what  is  so  use- 
ful to  life  and  so  imposing  and  amazing  to  the 
eye.  It  is  thus  with  our  faith  in  Christ.  The 
discernible  part  of  him,  the  sublime  superstruc- 
ture of  his  humanity  and  service,  the  imitable 
and  reproducible  characteristics  in  him,  the  high 
career  over  which  faith  goes  in  victorious  pursuit 
of  the  ethical  goal  of  human  life,  and  in  confident 
grasp  of  the  sonship  of  all  men  to  God,  is  based 
upon  the  inimitable,  the  unreproducible,  the  in- 
effable in  Christ.  Below  time,  deeper  than  the 
relations  of  Creator  and  creature,  his  being  goes; 
he  is  the  Eternal  Humanity  in  the  life  of  the 
Infinite. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    SIGNIFICANCE    TO-DAY  OF  A    SUPREME 

CHRISTOLOGY. 


Tls  yap  eyvo)  vovv  Kvpiov.  —  Romans  xi.  34. 

'rjfxels  Se  vovv  XpiaTov  exofx^v.  —  1  Corinthians  ii.  16. 

"  If,  then,  not  only  the  law  which  is  upon  the  earth  is  a 
shadow,  but  also  all  our  life  which  is  upon  the  earth  is  the  same, 
and  we  live  among  the  nations  under  the  shadow  of  Christ,  we 
must  see  whether  the  truth  of  all  these  shadows  may  not  come 
to  be  known  in  that  revelation."  —  Origen,  De  Principiis,  Book 
II.  eh.  vi.  7. 

"  We  beseech  the  Father  of  Lights,  if  he  is  the  God  of  in- 
finite charity  we  proclaim  him  to  be,  to  tell  us  whether  all  our 
thoughts  of  freedom  and  truth  have  proceeded  from  the  Father 
of  Lies,  —  whether  for  eighteen  centuries  we  have  been  prop- 
agating a  mockSry  when  we  have  said  that  there  is  a  Son  of 
God,  who  is  the  Truth,  and  who  can  make  us  free."  —  F.  D. 
Maurice,  Theological  Essays,  p.  90. 

"  For  my  own  part,  I  think  that  sympathy  is  one  condition  of 
historical  insight ;  and  if  I  had  no  sympathy  with  that  Old  Tes- 
tament religion  as  the  ripe  fruit  of  which  I  regard  primitive 
Christianity,  I  should  know  that  my  labors  would  be  smitten 
with  sterility.  .  .  .  We  will  study  the  products  of  the  soil, 
and  gather  such  precious  gifts  as  we  can  for  Him  to  whom  the 
star  will  point  us."  — Dr.  T.  K.  Cheyne,  Bampton  Lectures,  p.  2. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE   SIGNIFICANCE   TO-DAY   OF  A  SUPREME 
CHRISTOLOGY. 

The  high  Christology  for  which  I  contended 
in  the  last  chapter,  I  believe  to  be  of  the  greatest 
moment  in  reference  to  the  intellectual  life  char- 
acteristic of  the  time.  Of  course  it  is  believed 
that  the  transcendent  view  of  the  Person  of  Jesus 
is  in  and  of  itself  the  true  view ;  it  is  also  held  to 
be  the  regulative  principle  in  all  valid  thinking 
upon  ultimate  things,  the  great  constructive  and 
conservative  force  in  Christian  theology.  With- 
out this  guide,  students  will  lose  themselves  in  the 
wilderness  of  mere  biblical  learning;  they  will 
have  no  oracle  to  question  concerning  the  worth 
of  new  theological  theory,  no  standard  of  truth 
whereby  its  value  can  be  measured ;  they  will  be 
shallow  optimists  or  prophets  of  despair  before 
the  vast  social  problems  of  the  age ;  they  will  be 
unable  to  raise  any  effectual  barrier  against  the 
materialism,  philosophical  and  practical,  which 
confronts  this  generation.  But  with  Christ  as 
Lord,  and  with  the  Lord  as  the  Spirit,  one  may 
hope  for  great  popular  gain  to  the  Bible  from  the 


140  A   SUPBEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

new  and  illuminating  scholarship  through  which 
it  is  passing ;  one  may  look  for  a  scheme  of  Chris- 
tian theology  more  accordant  with  the  facts  of 
human  history,  the  moral  reason  of  mankind, 
and  the  highest  in  revelation ;  one  may  entertain 
the  most  exalted  social  ideal  with  the  confidence 
of  intelligence  as  well  as  the  warmth  of  love,  and 
take  part  in  the  stupendous  enterprise  of  realiz- 
ing the  reign  of  righteousness  in  the  earth  with- 
out danger  of  falling  a  victim  either  to  fanaticism 
or  despair;  and,  lastly,  one  may  feel  one's  self 
qualified  to  resist  all  forms  of  opinion  that  belit- 
tle the  significance  of  the  spirit  of  man. 

To  every  great  movement  there  are  two  sides. 
It  is  rich  with  possible  good  to  mankind,  and  it 
is  big  with  possible  disaster.  Leadershij)  is  the 
grand  permanent  necessity  of  humanity.  The 
simplest  form  of  this  necessity  is  the  leadership 
which  every  man  must  exercise  over  himself. 
The  control  of  the  energies  of  thought,  the  disci- 
pline of  the  forces  of  passion,  the  drill  of  all  the 
great  psychic  possibilities,  their  larger  and  better 
organization,  and  the  handling  of  them,  as  a 
great  general  does  his  army,  is  part  of  the  ever- 
lasting obligation  resting  upon  rational  life.  An- 
other form  of  the  same  necessity  meets  one  in  the 
family.  Here  is  a  movement  of  the  most  beauti- 
ful promise,  and  at  the  same  time  under  constant 
menace.  Almost  all  homes  start  on  the  equal 
footing  of  great  instincts.     Honor,  seK-sacrifice, 


ADEQUATE  LEADERSHIP.  141 

love,  and  the  soul  of  a  transforming  friendship 
lie  abundant  in  the  vast  instinctive  forces  upon 
which  the  household  is  founded.  These  are  the 
magnificent  materials  out  of  which,  by  discipline, 
drill,  organization,  and  wise  leadership,  the  invin- 
cible standing  army  of  domestic  happiness  may 
be  developed.  The  victory  or  defeat  of  family 
ideals,  the  honor  or  the  shame  of  the  home,  sim- 
ply means  leadership,  or  the  absence  of  it.  One 
might  trace  the  working  of  the  same  principle 
through  all  the  widening  circles  of  business  enter- 
prise and  political  life.  But  it  is  time  to  give 
this  thought  the  direction  for  which  it  is  here 
introduced.  The  gravest  question  that  can  come 
before  the  responsible  leaders  m  the  religious 
world  in  any  generation  concerns  the  control  of 
the  best  movements.  To  have  a  race-horse  get 
away  from  its  driver  is  bad,  to  have  an  express 
train  going  at  full  speed  leave  the  rails  is  greatly 
worse,  and  to  have  our  planet  escape  from  the 
grasp  of  gravitation  would  be  a  supreme  calam- 
ity.  The  richer  the  enterprise  is  in  possible 
benefits  to  the  world,  the  deeper  should  be  the 
anxiety  for  its  wise  control.  Looking  backward 
over  the  history  of  the  church,  one  is  profoundly 
impressed  with  the  importance  of  adequate  lead- 
ership. The  vast  significance  of  Stephen  lies 
in  the  fact  that  he  began  the  rescue  of  Christian- 
ity from  the  incompetent  hands  of  Jewish  disci- 
ples, that  he  spoke  one  word  of  magnificent  in- 


142  A  SUPREME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

sight  for  the  universalism  of  the  gosj)el ;  and  the 
larger  merit  of  the  apostle  Paul  is  best  seen  from 
this  point  of  view.  Modern  New  Testament 
scholarship  has  made  conspicuous  the  grandeur  of 
Paul's  contention,  the  breadth  of  the  principle 
upon  which  he  stood,  and  the  un]3aralleled  service 
which  he  rendered  in  emancipating  Christianity 
from  Judaism,  in  exhibiting  it  in  its  independent 
and  surpassing  grace,  and  in  employing  with 
such  wisdom  and  devotion  his  consummate  genius 
for  almost  every  variety  of  leadership,  in  guiding 
to  its  infinitely  beneficent  issues  the  divine  move- 
ment inaugurated  by  his  Master.  One  hardly 
dares  picture  what  the  religion  of  Jesus  would 
have  come  to  if  it  had  been  left  exclusively  in 
the  hands  of  men  like  Peter  and  James.  The 
fact  that  Stej)hen  and  Paul  and  John,  and  not 
they,  were  in  chief  command,  has  changed  the 
character  of  the  Christian  centuries,  —  has  indeed 
made  possible  all  the  new  emancipations  that  the 
church  has  experienced.  When,  in  the  third  cen- 
tury, Christianity  came  into  vital  contact  with 
Greek  philosophy,  the  beneficence  of  the  issue 
was  due,  humanly  speaking,  to  the  fact  that  a 
Clement,  an  Origen,  an  Athanasius  controlled 
the  great  experiment;  and  later,  when  Roman 
law  and  institution  and  custom  became  the  rich 
environment,  the  substantial  message  of  Jesus 
was  saved  through  competent  and  masterly  leader- 
ship.    So  long  as  the  Reformation  was  under  the 


UNITARIAN  ISM  AND  HISTORY.  143 

direction  of  Liitlier  and  Calvin  and  Zwingli 
and  Knox,  it  brought  forth  its  best  fruits ;  when 
the  mighty  forces  passed  into  other  and  inferior 
hands,  all  manner  of  evil  results  followed.  The 
counter  Reformation  in  the  Roman  Church  got  its 
example  and  incitement  from  the  great  German, 
but  it  got  its  opportunity  through  the  waste  into 
which  the  original  river  of  God  had  run.  One  of 
the  greatest  movements  in  human  history,  the 
French  Revolution,  became  an  immeasurable  trag- 
edy through  want  of  a  masterful  guiding  mind. 
Out  of  that  terrible  vital  drama  vast  benefits, 
profound  lessons,  and  lasting  impulses  have  come 
to  the  modern  world ;  but  had  there  been  an  ade- 
quate presiding  character,  a  man  like  Cromwell 
or  AYashington  or  Lincoln,  instead  of  a  moral 
earthquake  we  should  have  had  an  orderly  and 
far  less  tragic  evolution.  The  New  England 
Unitarian  movement  was  fortunate  in  its  first 
great  leaders.  The  men  who  began  the  enter- 
prise had  a  great  message  to  deliver,  the  reality 
of  the  Eternal  Fatherhood  and  the  fact  of  a  di- 
vine humanity.  Men  like  Channing  and  Hedge 
and  Peabody  contributed  to  Christian  thought 
something  which,  if  it  had  possessed  in  early 
times,  it  had  long  ago  lost ;  and  when  they  had 
done  their  special  work  they  began  to  wonder  if, 
after  all,  there  might  not  be  a  diviner  meaning 
in  the  great  historic  s^mibols  than  they  had 
dreamed.     Especially  is  this  true  of  Hedge  and 


144  A  SUPBEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

Peabody.  The  conviction  kept  gaining  upon 
them  that,  after  having  clone  their  positive  work 
of  vindicating  the  real  Fatherhood  of  God  and 
the  universal  human  sonship,  there  might  be  a 
]30ssible  return,  not  indeed  to  the  Orthodoxy  with 
which  they  had  broken,  and  which  every  one  now 
recognizes  as  a  thing  of  the  past,  but  to  the  essen- 
tial and  eternal  truth  hidden  in  the  old  creeds, 
and  which  is  so  much  greater  than  the  movement 
represented  by  them.  This  meditation  of  a  pos- 
sible return,  through  a  profounder  interpretation 
of  historic  Christianity,  may  be  traced  in  several 
of  the  great  leaders  of  the  first  generation  of  Uni- 
tarians. This  was  one  of  the  many  indications 
of  their  genius.  If  that  movement,  which  stands 
associated  with  so  much  that  is  great  in  our  his- 
tory, and  whose  roll-call  includes  so  large  a  com- 
pany of  men  distinguished  alike  for  intellectual 
power  and  high  character,  should  spend  its  force 
and  run  out,  it  will  be  owing  to  this  one  thing, 
more  than  to  all  others,  that  its  leaders  to-day 
have  given  up  this  meditation  of  a  deeper  return 
to  the  past.  The  eternal  gospel  lies  there:  it 
looks  out  through  all  the  symbols  of  Christian  his- 
tory ;  it  has  meanings  in  it  which  the  old  names 
cover  hut  do  not  exhaust,  and  which  our  modern 
thinkers  do  not  begin  to  fathom ;  it  has  room  in 
it  for  the  great  Unitarian  contribution,  and  for 
every  other  vital  conception  that  the  struggles  of 
noble  men  have  forced  afresh  upon  the  attention 


THE  BROAD  CHUBCH.  145 

of  the  world.  The  Unitarian  movement  has  its 
opportunity  here :  it  must  contemplate  some  kind 
of  a  return,  —  a  return  consistent  with  its  mag- 
nificent protest  and  achievement,  —  or  it  must 
engage  in  a  serious  meditation  with  death.  Its 
future  depends  upon  the  wisdom  and  courage  of 
its  leaders.  The  Broad  Church  party  in  the 
Church  of  England  is  another  example.  So  long 
as  it  was  under  the  direction  of  the  great  and 
devout  mind  of  Maurice,  the  party  stood  for  the 
highest  things  in  the  faith  of  all  Christians.  Its 
philosophy  of  Christianity  and  Christian  institu- 
tions is  the  deepest  in  our  English  tongue.  It 
was  a  school  of  thought  full  of  light  and  heat  at 
the  same  time,  and  while  its  master  remained  at 
its  head  it  was  a  positive,  inclusive,  world-enrich- 
ing movement.  Since  his  death  a  new  genera- 
tion has  risen  up,  and  the  school  has  more  and 
more  tended  to  lose  definite  Christian  character- 
istics and  to  become  a  denying  spirit.  It  lives 
under  the  shadow  of  agnosticism,  and  rejoices  to 
show  how  very  little  it  is  necessary  to  believe  in 
order  to  belong  to  the  Church  of  England.  The 
sceptre  is  passing  from  its  hands,  and  that  which 
began  its  career  of  influence,  beautiful  as  the 
Syrian  river  Abana  issuing  from  the  snows  of 
Lebanon,  goes  to  waste,  like  it,  in  the  burning 
wilderness  of  negation.  Whenever  a  school  of 
thought  ceases  to  be  constructive,  in  the  true 
sense   creative;   whenever   it   becomes    predomi- 


146  A  SUPBEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

nantly  negative,  —  its  influence  is  on  the  wane,  its 
days  are  numbered.  The  world  is  a  vast  reality; 
Christianity  is,  as  Goethe  said,  an  infinite  thing; 
and  the  multitudes  of  serious  people  will  forever 
refuse  to  follow  the  men  who  lead  no  whither,  and 
who  spend  their  force  in  reducing  to  a  poor  mini- 
mum the  significance  of  our  human  universe. 

If,  now,  one  asks  what  has  been  the  great  note 
of  successful  leadership  in  the  past,  the  answer  is 
at  hand.  The  men  who  have  been,  in  the  fullest 
measure  and  the  noblest  manner,  under  the  pro- 
phetic mind  of  the  Lord,  the  masters  who  have 
been  conscious  of  their  Master  in  heaven,  and 
who  have  held  the  task  at  which  they  toiled  to  the 
judgment  seat  of  Christ,  have  been  the  great 
leaders  in  Christian  history.  In  so  far  as  they 
have  been  subject  to  this  supernal  prophetic 
mind,  they  have  been  able  to  avert  the  possible 
disaster;  they  have  been  strong  enough  to  realize 
the  possible  benefit  to  the  new  age  of  the  new 
development  of  the  eternal  truth.  In  so  far  as 
Paul,  and  Origen,  and  Augustine,  and  Luther, 
and  Edwards,  and  the  New  England  Unitarians 
have  escaped  from  the  mind  of  Christ,  or  from  the 
logic  of  that  mind,  they  have  become  eccentric, 
they  have  at  last  landed  their  followers  in  Dante's 
serious  predicament :  — ■ 

"  In  the  midway  of  this  our  mortal  life, 
I  found  me  in  a  gloomy  wood,  astray. 
Gone  from  the  path  direct ;  and  e'en  to  tell, 
It  were  no  easy  task,  how  savage  wild 


LEADEBSHIP   OF  CHRIST.  147 

That  forest,  how  robust  and  roug-h  its  growth, 
Which  to  remember  only,  my  dismay 
Renews,  in  bitterness  not  far  from  death."  ^ 

We  may  assume  it  as  an  axiom,  that  every  new 
movement  in  human  thinking  and  in  human 
affairs  that  escapes  from  the  leadership  of  the 
Lord  will  go  to  waste.  It  will  prove  a  sort  of 
Alcibiades.  The  vaster  it  is  in  promise,  the 
greater  will  be  the  wreck  if  the  control  of  the 
Supreme  Mind  in  history  is  despised  and  rejected. 
It  is  this  sense  of  safety  only  in  the  leadership 
of  Christ  that  makes  the  present  theological  situ- 
ation so  serious.  Hitherto  the  fight  has  been  for 
liberty;  the  problem  now  is  the  wise  and  benefi- 
cent use  of  our  liberty.  The  victory  for  freedom 
of  Christian  scholarship  does  not  by  any  means 
end  the  war.  The  victory  for  wisdom  remains 
to  be  won.  This  is  mainly  the  phase  of  the  cam- 
paign upon  which  the  Christian  thinkers  of  this 
generation  have  now  entered.  They  have  won 
their  freedom.  They  have  inaugurated  a  new  theo- 
logical movement;  it  is  gainmg  greater  headway 
with  every  year.  But  they  have  not  yet  subdued 
this  new  power  to  the  sovereignty  of  the  Lord. 
And,  while  this  continues  to  be  the  state  of  the 
case,  the  whole  thing  is  but  a  doubtful  experi- 
ment. Incidental  benefits  and  emancipations, 
one  may  readily  admit,  have  already  come;  but 
that  a  universal  and  permanent  change  for  the 

^  Inferno,  canto  i.,  opening  lines. 


148  A  SUPBEME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

better  has  arrived  must  not  be  too  hastily  as- 
sumed. The  philosophy  of  Christianity  and  of 
man's  life  in  this  world,  with  which  this  genera- 
tion has  largely  broken,  contained  elements  of 
true  greatness  and  everlasting  moment;  and  the 
forms  of  human  character  that  rose  up  under  its 
influence  stand  in  history  invested  with  a  noble 
dignity,  and  alive  still  with  a  terrible  passion  for 
righteousness.  I  believe  that  the  possibility  of 
a  universal  and  permanent  improvement  in  the 
working  philosophy  of  life  has  arrived;  but 
whether  the  possibility  shall  become  actual  is 
indeed  the  large  and  serious  problem  before  the 
Christian  thinkers  of  to-day.  This  new  birth  of 
the  Christian  centuries  is  already  here.  It  is  a 
goodly  child,  but  it  represents  in  its  blood  and 
brain  a  double  inheritance.  It  comes  from  the 
Lord  from  heaven,  by  way  of  the  first  man  who 
was  of  the  earth  earthy.  Men  of  the  new  type 
of  thought  have  had  their  great  festival  hours; 
they  have  exchanged  sentiments  of  joy  and  hope 
over  the  prophetic  new-comer.  It  has  seemed 
to  them  like  the  visit  of  the  dayspring  from  on 
high,  a  light  to  enlighten  the  nations,  and  the 
latest  glory  of  the  church.  But  the  festival  hour 
is  gone;  the  years  of  wise  education  and  direc- 
tion of  the  new  life  have  come.  A  sword  shall 
assuredly  pierce  through  the  heart  of  the  leaders 
of  to-day  if  they  shall  fail  to  subdue  this  fresh 
birth  of  time  to  the  rule  of  the  Highest,  if  they 


THE  HIGHER   CRITICISM.  149 

shall  cease  to  remember  that  the  advent  of  a 
vaster  and  nobler  faith  must  mean  the  vaster  and 
nobler  advent  of  Christ.  Unless  he  is  the  Alpha 
and  Omega  of  this  new  movement  it  will  end  in 
vanity,  it  will  become  the  despair  of  its  support- 
ers. The  purpose  of  this  chapter  has  now  been, 
it  is  hoped,  clearly  indicated,  and  we  may  go  on 
to  consider  several  of  the  greater  religious  inter- 
ests of  the  time  in  relation  to  the  mind  of  Christ, 
and  the  first  must  be  the  higher  criticism. 

I. 

The  Bible  is  the  monumental  record  of  the 
monimiental  revelation  of  the  mind  of  God  to 
mankind.  The  great  instrument  of  this  disclos- 
ure of  the  thought  of  the  Eternal  is  prophetic 
genius,  and  this  mediating  instrumentality  be- 
comes supreme  and  final  in  the  prophetic  mind 
of  Jesus  Christ.  The  Bible,  therefore,  presents 
a  twofold  problem  to  the  modern  world:  its  pro- 
duction is  a  question  for  the  historian,  and  its 
character  concerns  the  ethical  and  theological 
student.  The  Bible  as  a  collection  of  books 
has  a  history,  and  the  problem  of  the  higher 
criticism  is  to  pierce  through  the  crude  masses  of 
received  opinion,  and  to  reach  as  near  as  possible 
to  the  actual  historic  process.  In  a  true  sense, 
the  Bible  belongs  to  the  historical  and  literary 
scholar,  just  as  the  Homeric  poems  and  all  other 
ancient  literature   belong   to   him.     Our   sacred 


150  A  SUPBEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

writings  were  produced  at  certain  times,  in  cer- 
tain largely  important  circumstances,  in  certain 
parts,  separated  by  intervals  longer  or  shorter, 
and  by  certain  men.  To  fix  for  all  readers  of 
tliese  books  the  time  of  their  production ;  to  de- 
fine the  widely  significant  environments  into  which 
they  were  born,  and  in  reaction  against  which 
they  grew  and  took  mature  shape  in  the  thought 
and  style  of  the  author;  to  find  the  real  literary 
unities,  and  to  dissolve  apparent  wholes  into  their 
parts,  and  in  each  case  to  assign  each  distinct 
composition  to  its  real  author,  —  this  is  the  great 
enterprise  of  the  higher  critic.  When  one  con- 
siders its  scope,  and  measures  it  against  the 
largest  possible  learning  and  the  keenest  critical 
power,  one  may  well  read  the  books  of  these 
scholars  with  Carlyle's  maxim  of  "wise  memory 
and  wise  oblivion  "  in  mind.  Still,  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments,  as  a  literary  product  in  time, 
belong  to  the  historian.  He  must  carry  to  the 
achievement  of  his  task  only  the  interests  of  his- 
torical science ;  he  must  be  allowed  all  the  time 
needful  for  the  accomplishment  of  an  enterprise 
of  such  vast  reach;  he  must  mine  away  amid 
growing  heaps  of  debris  and  confusion,  while  the 
vein  that  he  is  working  continues  unexhausted; 
he  must  plan  for  a  thousand  generations  of  suc- 
cessors, who  will  bring  to  the  uncompleted  work 
an  improved  equipment  and  ampler  powers;  he 
must  idealize  his  individual  undertaking  into  part 


THE  BIBLE  AND  SCHOLARSHIP.  151 

of  tlie  historical  task  of  humanity.  Nothing  can, 
for  one  moment,  be  allowed  to  interfere  with  the 
interests  of  this  great  department  of  science. 
The  question  has  nothing  mystical  or  transcend- 
ent about  it;  it  is  simply  a  question  of  fact.  As 
the  heavenly  bodies,  their  relations,  their  move- 
ments, and  their  times  and  seasons,  are  the  prob- 
lem of  astronomical  science,  so  the  sacred  writ- 
ings that  compose  our  Bible,  their  date,  their 
environment,  their  parts,  and  their  authorship, 
are  a  problem  for  historical  science.  These  ques- 
tions do  not  in  the  first  instance  at  all  concern 
faith ;  they  concern  scholarship,  and  they  can  be 
settled  only  by  scholarship. 

But  the  Bible  transcends  the  mere  historian. 
So  far  as  it  is  outward  fact,  it  falls  within  his 
domain ;  but  so  far  as  it  is  a  body  of  ethical  and 
spiritual  truth,  it  falls  within  the  concern  of 
humanity.  The  revelation  of  God  as  a  record 
belongs  to  learning;  but  as  a  moral  and  spiritual 
content  it  belongs  to  all  prophetic  souls.  It  is 
this  double  character  of  the  Bible  that  is  apt  to 
be  forgotten  at  the  present  time.  Astronomers 
are  busy  with  the  determination  of  the  condition 
of  things  on  the  planet  Mars.  They  are  trying 
to  spell  out  its  history,  the  character  of  the  high- 
est forms  of  the  life  that  may  be  there;  and 
occasionally  we  hear  of  interesting  discoveries 
concerning  our  nearest  solar  neighbor  and  our 
possible  brethren,  of  whom  we  seem  to  have  got- 


152  A  SUPBEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

ten  the  inside  track.  Now  tliis  aspect  of  the 
militant  planet  is  of  great  interest,  but  it  is  not 
the  only  aspect.  Mars  in  one  sense  belongs  to 
astronomers,  and  in  another  and  far  loftier  sense 
it  belongs  to  humanity.  The  service  which  it 
may  ultimately  render  to  our  race  through  science 
may  be  wonderful,  but  even  that  service  will  be 
insignificant  compared  with  what  it  has  done  for 
mankind,  since  the  morning  of  time,  through  the 
ministry  of  beauty.  The  Mars  of  science  works 
out  its  benefits  very  slowly;  the  Mars  of  poetry 
is  forever  in  the  perfect  f ulfilhnent  of  its  mission ; 
in  regard  to  the  former  there  may  be  doubt  and 
hesitation,  but  with  respect  to  the  latter  there 
can  be  only  certain  and  limitless  joy.  Whether 
the  lines  on  its  surface  be  canals  may  for  a  long 
time  remain  a  matter  of  debate ;  but  souls  with 
serious  purpose  and  a  sense  of  the  beautiful  have 
ever  felt  what  Longfellow  expresses  so  exquis- 
itely :  — 

"  Is  it  the  tender  star  of  love  ? 
The  star  of  love  and  dreams  ? 
Oh  no  !  from  that  blue  tent  above, 
A  hero's  armor  gleams. 


"  0  star  of  streng-th  !  I  see  thee  stand 
And  smile  upon  my  pain  ; 
Thou  beekonest  with  thy  mailed  hand 
And  I  am  strong  again." 

And  as  the  star  has  an  interest  beyond  the  sphere 
of  science,  transcending  utterly  the  work  of  the 


THE  DIVINE  STANBABD.  153 

astronomer,  so  the  Bible  has  a  significance  not 
only  for  the  historian,  but  also  for  humanity.  It 
is  this  last  and  highest  significance  that  must  be 
conserved,  and  it  can  be  done,  in  my  judgment, 
only  as  the  mind  of  Christ  is  carried  through  the 
entire  collection  of  these  sacred  writings  as  the 
absolute  judge  of  their  worth. 

Distinct  as  are  the  historical  and  spiritual  as- 
pects of  the  Bible  to  the  scholarly  mind,  it  must 
be  confessed  that  they  are  in  popular  thought  in 
the  saddest  confusion.  The  results  of  the  higher 
criticism  are  simply  bewildering  to  the  average 
layman.  They  thus  perplex  him  because  he  has 
regarded  the  Bible  as  carrying  with  it  in  every 
book,  chapter,  and  verse  the  evidence  of  its  di- 
vine worth,  because  he  has  failed  to  judge  it  by 
the  Person  of  Christ.  And  all  men  must  share 
in  this  confusion  if  there  is  nothing  fixed  in 
Christian  faith.  The  higher  criticism  mutilates 
our  Bible,  if  the  Bible  does  not  witness  to  some- 
thing greater  than  itself.  This  modern  method  of 
investigation  comes  in  the  name  of  pure  scholar- 
ship, with  the  authority  of  historical  science,  and 
destroys  the  letter.  If  one  does  not  reach  the 
Christ  through  both  Testaments,  if  one  cannot 
invoke  him  for  the  determination  of  their  worth, 
one  must  have  a  horror  of  the  higher  criticism. 
To  retain  profound  and  living  faith  in  the  Bible 
to-day,  one  must  be  able  to  carry  through  the 
new  views  of  its  genesis,    the  dissolution  of  its 


154  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

parts,  and  the  reversions  of  its  history  a  divine 
standard  of  value.  That  standard  of  value  is  the 
mind  of  Chi-ist.  With  the  Christ  of  the  New 
Testament  and  Christian  history,  representing  in 
himself  the  character  and  pui'pose  of  God,  and 
the  drift  of  the  universe  in  accordance  with  that 
purpose,  faith  wiU  obtain  new  insights  and  a 
richer  sense  of  the  progress  of  revelation  from 
following  the  destructive  path  of  all  sane  criti- 
cism. Belief  in  the  miraculous  need  not  be  sur- 
rendered, but  it  must  be  relegated  to  its  place  of 
due  subordination.  The  errant  element,  particu- 
larly in  the  Old  Testament,  will  be  frankly  ad- 
mitted, and  the  introductory  and  imjjerf ect  nature 
of  the  whole  Hebrew  dispensation.  Paul's  start- 
ling comparisons  in  his  second  letter  to  the  Corin- 
thians ^  between  the  dispensations  of  Moses  and 
of  Christ  will  then  be  understood,  and  the  mag- 
nificent argument  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
on  the  imperfect  character  of  the  older  revelation, 
and  on  the  catholicity  and  finality  of  Christianity, 
will  be  appreciated  at  its  full  superlative  worth. 
The  way  in  which  Paul  the  Pharisee,  the  passion- 
ate devotee  of  Judaism,  was  able  to  emancipate 
himself,  is  of  the  highest  moment  to  the  modern 
student  of  the  Bible.  But  for  the  mind  of 
Christ,  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  this  emanci- 
pation ;  or,  if  it  be  possible  on  the  supposition  of 
a  lapse  into  atheism,  this  is  not  the  transcending 

1  2  Cor.  iii. 


THE  BIBLE  AND  SCHOLARSHIP.  151 

of  the  historical  task  of  humanity.  Nothing  can, 
for  one  moment,  be  allowed  to  interfere  with  the 
interests  of  this  great  department  of  science. 
The  question  has  nothing  mystical  or  transcend- 
ent about  it;  it  is  simply  a  question  of  fact.  As 
the  heavenly  bodies,  their  relations,  their  move- 
ments, and  their  times  and  seasons,  are  the  prob- 
lem of  astronomical  science,  so  the  sacred  writ- 
ings that  compose  our  Bible,  their  date,  their 
environment,  their  parts,  and  their  authorship, 
are  a  problem  for  historical  science.  These  ques- 
tions do  not  in  the  first  instance  at  all  concern 
faith;  they  concern  scholarship,  and  they  can  be 
settled  only  by  scholarship. 

But  the  Bible  transcends  the  mere  historian. 
So  far  as  it  is  outward  fact,  it  falls  within  his 
domain ;  but  so  far  as  it  is  a  body  of  ethical  and 
spiritual  truth,  it  falls  within  the  concern  of 
humanity.  The  revelation  of  God  as  a  record 
belongs  to  learning;  but  as  a  moral  and  spiritual 
content  it  belongs  to  all  proj^hetic  souls.  It  is 
this  double  character  of  the  Bible  that  is  apt  to 
be  forgotten  at  the  present  time.  Astronomers 
are  busy  with  the  determination  of  the  condition 
of  things  on  the  planet  Mars.  They  are  trvino- 
to  spell  cut  it'=i  his+AT-y^  th.  cbc^xaoter  of  the  high- 
est forms  of  the  life  that  may  be  there;  and 
occasionally  we  hear  of  interesting  discoveries 
concerning  our  nearest  solar  neighbor  and  our 
possible  brethren,  of  whom  we  seem  to  have  got- 


152  A  SUPBEME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

ten  the  inside  track.  Now  this  aspect  of  the 
militant  planet  is  of  great  interest,  but  it  is  not 
the  only  aspect.  Mars  in  one  sense  belongs  to 
astronomers,  and  in  another  and  far  loftier  sense 
it  belongs  to  humanity.  The  service  which  it 
may  ultimately  render  to  our  race  through  science 
may  be  wonderful,  but  even  that  service  will  be 
insignificant  compared  with  what  it  has  done  for 
mankind,  since  the  morning  of  time,  through  the 
ministry  of  beauty.  The  Mars  of  science  works 
out  its  benefits  very  slowly;  the  Mars  of  poetry 
is  forever  in  the  perfect  fulfillment  of  its  mission ; 
in  regard  to  the  former  there  may  be  doubt  and 
hesitation,  but  with  respect  to  the  latter  there 
can  be  only  certain  and  limitless  joy.  Whether 
the  lines  on  its  surface  be  canals  may  for  a  long 
time  remain  a  matter  of  debate;  but  souls  with 
serious  purpose  and  a  sense  of  the  beautiful  have 
ever  felt  what  Longfellow  expresses  so  exquis- 
itely :  — 

"  Is  it  the  tender  star  of  love  ? 

The  star  of  love  and  dreams  ? 
Oh  no  I  from  that  blue  tent  above, 
A  hero's  armor  gleams. 


-'  0  "tar  of  strength  !  I  see  thee  stand 
And  smile  upon  iiiy  pcvlu , 
Thou  beckonest  with  thy  mailed  hand 
And  I  am  strong  again." 

And  as  the  star  has  an  interest  beyond  the  sphere 
of  science,  transcending  utterly  the  work  of  the 


THE  DIVINE  STANDARD.  153 

astronomer,  so  the  Bible  has  a  significance  not 
only  for  the  historian,  but  also  for  humanity.  It 
is  this  last  and  highest  significance  that  must  be 
conserved,  and  it  can  be  done,  in  my  judgment, 
only  as  the  mind  of  Christ  is  carried  through  the 
entire  collection  of  these  sacred  writings  as  the 
absolute  judge  of  their  worth. 

Distinct  as  are  the  historical  and  spiritual  as- 
pects of  the  Bible  to  the  scholarly  mind,  it  must 
be  confessed  that  they  are  in  popular  thought  in 
the  saddest  confusion.  The  results  of  the  higher 
criticism  are  simply  bewildering  to  the  average 
layman.  They  thus  perplex  him  because  he  has 
regarded  the  Bible  as  carrying  with  it  in  every 
book,  chapter,  and  verse  the  evidence  of  its  di- 
vine worth,  because  he  has  failed  to  judge  it  by 
the  Person  of  Christ.  And  all  men  must  share 
in  this  confusion  if  there  is  nothing  fixed  in 
Christian  faith.  Tho  higher  criticism  mutilates 
our  Bible,  if  the  Bible  does  not  witness  to  some- 
thing greater  than  itself.  This  modern  method  of 
investigation  comes  in  the  name  of  pure  scholar- 
ship, with  the  authority  of  historical  science,  and 
destroys  the  letter.  If  one  does  not  reach  the 
Christ  through  both  Testaments  if  one  cannot 
invoke  him  for  the  determination  of  their  worth, 
one  must  have  a  horror  of  the  higher  criticism. 
To  retain  profound  and  living  faith  in  the  Bible 
to-day,  one  must  be  able  to  carry  through  the 
new  views  of  its  genesis,    the  dissolution  of  its 


154  A  SUPBEME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

parts,  and  the  reversions  of  its  history  a  divine 
standard  of  value.  That  standard  of  value  is  the 
mind  of  Christ.  With  the  Christ  of  tl^e  New 
Testament  and  Christian  history,  representing  in 
himself  the  character  and  purpose  of  God,  and 
the  drift  of  the  universe  in  accordance  with  that 
purpose,  faith  will  obtain  new  insights  and  a 
richer  sense  of  the  progress  of  revelation  from 
following  the  destructive  path  of  all  sane  criti- 
cism. Belief  in  the  miraculous  need  not  be  sur- 
rendered, but  it  must  be  relegated  to  its  place  of 
due  subordination.  The  errant  element,  particu- 
larly in  the  Old  Testament,  will  be  frankly  ad- 
mitted, and  the  introductory  and  imperfect  nature 
of  the  whole  Hebrew  dispensation.  Paul's  start- 
ling comparisons  in  his  second  letter  to  the  Corin- 
thians ^  between  the  dispensations  of  Moses  and 
of  Christ  will  then  be  understood,  and  the  mag- 
nificent argument  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
on  the  imperfect  character  of  the  older  revelation, 
and  on  the  catholicity  and  finality  of  Christianity, 
will  be  appreciated  at  its  full  superlative  worth. 
The  way  in  which  Paul  the  Pharisee,  the  passion- 
ate devotee  of  Judaism,  was  able  to  emancipate 
himself,  io  cf  the  highest  moment  to  the  modern 
student  of  the  Bible.  ±iut  lor  the  mind  of 
Christ,  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  this  emanci- 
pation ;  or,  if  it  be  possible  on  the  supposition  of 
a  lapse  into  atheism,  this  is  not  the  transcending 

1  2  Cor.  iii. 


PAUL'S  EMANCIPATION.  155 

o£  an  old  faitli,  but  tlie  contradiction  of  it,  the 
abandonment  of  all  faitli.  Paul  was  enabled  to 
occupy  a  liigiier  point  of  vision :  be  was  lifted  to 
an  elevation  from  wliicli  be  could  behold  other 
and  brighter  worlds;  he  was  furnished  with  an 
ideal,  the  mind  of  the  Lord,  and  thus  coidd 
determine  the  defect  of  the  literature  upon  which 
he  had  gro\sii  to  manhood.  It  is  indeed  wonder- 
ful to  see  how  the  Jewish  disciples  of  Jesus  move 
out  from  under  the  sovereignty  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. It  no  longer  satisfies  them;  they  have 
been  lifted  beyond  its  scope ;  they  live  in  a  new 
and  diviner  world.  The  secret  of  this  easy  and 
almost  unconscious  self -emancipation  lies  in  the 
Christ  ideal  that  filled  their  thoughts.  They 
possess  an  absolute  measure  for  truth,  and  right- 
eousness, and  beauty;  Christ  had  made  them 
free.  No  higher  critic  to-day,  who  remains  a 
believer  in  God  and  in  an  historic  revelation, 
transcends  the  orthodox  tradition  about  the  Bible 
more  completely  than  Paul  transcended  the  Jew- 
ish tradition  concerning  the  Hebrew  Scriptures. 
And  what  is  true  of  him  holds  equally  of  the 
author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  and  the 
apostle  John.  The  freedom  of  movement  is 
something  amazing.  At  the  same  time  these  men 
possess  a  new  sense  of  the  worth  of  the  old  reve- 
lation. And  this  should  be  true  now.  The  mind 
of  Christ  reveals  the  defect  of  the  Old  Testament ; 
it  brings  into  impressive  relief  its  imperishable 


156  A  SUPREME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

value,  —  the  depth  and  vitality  of  its  movement 
in  the  spirit,  the  greatness  of  its  human  interest, 
the  ocean  expanse  and  j^rofundity  of  its  literature, 
its  inapproachable  proi3hetic  genius,  its  towering 
preeminence  among  all  pre-Christian  forms  of 
the  revelation  of  God  to  mankind.  With  the 
Master  of  John  and  Paul  as  our  Master,  there 
need  be  no  special  pleading  for  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, no  fine-spun  theories  to  reconcile  it  as  a 
totality  with  the  Absolute  Righteousness,  no  mis- 
erable apologetic  identifying  it  to  its  last  word 
with  the  Infinite  Love.  The  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  is  the  great  revision  of  the  Hebrew  faith. 
In  that  discourse  there  is  outlined,  in  a  few  brief 
paragraphs  and  with  the  deepest  reverence,  a 
method  of  criticism  infinitely  more  radical  than 
any  presented  by  the  scholarship  of  to-day.  The 
whole  past  is  brought  under  the  judgment  of  its 
ideal  as  interpreted  by  the  supreme  Idealist. 
There  could  not  be  a  severer  test ;  and  the  con- 
tinued application  of  it  to  the  Bible  will  give 
that  book  its  legitimate  place  in  Christian  faith. 

The  old  argument  against  the  higher  criticism 
from  the  fact  that  Jesus  used  the  Old  Testament, 
and  which  assumes  that  if  Moses  had  not  written 
the  Pentateuch  and  David  the  Psalms  and  Solo- 
mon Ecclesiastes,  —  which  takes  for  granted  that 
if  the  traditional  view  of  the  origin  and  composi- 
tion of  the  Hebrew  literature  had  not  been  true, 
Christ  would  have  told  his  disciples  so,  —  is  self- 


PRINCIPLE  OF  ACCOMMODATION.  157 

evidently  worthless.  The  principle  of  the  In- 
carnation involves  an  accommodation  of  the  Eter- 
nal to  temjDoral  conditions;  and  it  was  clearly 
beyond  even  the  power  of  Divinity  in  three  short 
years  to  sweep  the  Jewish  mind  clean  of  all  its 
errors  and  superstitions.  The  reserve  of  Christ, 
in  dealing  with  an  age  at  all  points  so  immeasur- 
ably below  him,  is  one  of  the  notes  of  his  surpass- 
ing greatness.  He  knew  that  the  individual,  the 
age,  and  the  race  must  outgrow  crude  and  erro- 
neous opinion,  —  that,  indeed,  growth  is  the  only 
possible  emancipation.  He  must,  therefore,  have 
passed  over  a  thousand  foolish  notions  as  if  they 
were  not;  he  was,  in  fact,  under  the  necessity  of 
introducing  his  original  and  absolute  teaching  in 
the  current  forms  of  thought  which  were  fre- 
quently unsatisfactory.  Employing  the  principle 
of  accommodation  as  far  as  perfect  fidelity  to 
the  truth  would  allow,  he  was  even  then  largely 
misunderstood.  Possessing  the  gift  of  communis 
cation,  the  genius  of  the  teacher  in  a  measure 
absolutely  inapproachable,  he  was  not  able  wholly 
to  overcome  the  obstacle  of  human  stupidity. 
When  one  thinks  of  the  continuous  act  of  accom- 
modation, the  perpetual  rational  self-sacrifice  in- 
volved in  the  career  of  Jesus,  one  must  regard  as 
nonsensical  the  claim  that,  if  the  Jewish  tradition 
about  the  origin,  date,  and  authorship  of  the 
various  books  of  the  Old  Testament  had  been 
erroneous,  he  would  have  put  himself  on  record 


158  A  SUPREME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

against  it.  He  Lad  a  whole  world  of  mistakes 
and  superstitions  and  lies  against  which  to  go  on 
record,  and  he  had  no  time  for  one  so  compara- 
tively insignificant.  The  Old  Testament,  as  a 
question  for  the  historian,  did  not  touch  the  mind 
of  Jesus,  so  far  as  we  can  see.  It  was  an  aspect 
of  the  Hebrew  Bible  that  did  not  pressingly  con- 
cern him,  and  that  he  thought  he  could  leave  to 
his  far-off  disciples  in  Germany  and  Britain  and 
America  to  settle  among  themselves.  But  while 
the  Old  Testament  in  its  purely  historical  aspect 
lies  entirely  outside  the  work  that  Christ  set  for 
himself,  still,  in  another  sense,  the  fact  that  it 
was  his  sacred  book  is  of  the  utmost  importance. 
While  he  transcends  it  infinitely,  he  nevertheless 
makes  conspicuous  its  permanent  interest.  On 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures  he  was  educated;  from 
them  he  preached  the  sermon  that  marked  the 
beginning  of  his  career ;  ^  and  his  mission  was  the 
divine  continuation  of  their  whole  higher  spirit. 
No  one  can  go  with  Jesus  through  his  great  ini- 
tial temptation,  and  witness  the  weapons  by  which 
he  wins  his  triple  victory,  without  a  new  and  pro- 
founder  sense  of  reverence  for  the  Old  Testament. 
Out  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  over  which  the 
higher  critics  have  had  their  battles,  came  the 
three  sentences  by  which  Jesus  kept  his  heart  and 
repelled  the  tempter:  "Man  shall  not  live  by 
bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  that  proceedeth 

1  Luke  iv.  16-22. 


CHRIST  AND   THE  OLD  TESTAMENT.      159 

out  of  the  mouth  of  God;  "  "thou  shalt  not  tempt 
the  Lord  thy  God;"  "thou  shalt  worship  the 
Lord  thy  God,  and  him  only  shalt  thou  serve." 
These  are  the  weapons  of  the  Spirit  drawn  from 
the  vast  armory  of  the  Old  Testament,  with  which 
Jesus  won  his  victory  for  himself  and  for  human- 
ity.^ One  must  recall  the  fact  that  the  hymn 
which  he  sung  with  his  disciples  at  the  close  of 
the  Last  Supper  was  from  the  Hebrew  Psalter ;  ^ 
and  that  again,  in  his  agony  and  bloody  sweat, 
when  the  supreme  duty  of  surrender  at  any  cost 
to  the  will  of  God  appeared  before  him,  it  came 
in  the  words  of  another  Psalm : ^  "I  delight  to 
do  thy  will,  O  my  God."  While,  in  his  final 
hours  upon  the  cross,  as  at  all  times  during  his 
life,  he  had  thoughts  and  experiences  for  which 
the  Old  Testament  had  no  words,  yet  it  is  pro- 
foundly interesting  to  find  Christ  using  its  sacred 
utterances  in  commending  his  spirit  into  the 
hands  of  his  Father.*  There  could  be  no  higher 
testimony  to  the  spiritual  worth  of  the  sacred 
writings  thus  employed. 

Further,  Jesus  everywhere  appears  as  the  ful- 
fillment of  the  forward  look  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, the  grand  historic  vindication  of  the  sad 
but  invincible  optimism  of  the  Hebrew  prophets. 
The  whole  purpose,  spirit,  and  progressive  inte- 
rior movement   recorded   in  the  Old  Testament 

^  Deut.  vi.  13,  16 ;  viii.  3.         ^  Ps.  cxiii.,  cxviii. 
*»  Ps.  xl.  8.  *  Ps.  xxxi.  5. 


160  A  SUPBEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

finds  its  consummation  in  Christ,  and  in  this  way 
he  becomes  its  absolute  judge.  All  that  points 
forward  toward  him,  all  that  in  any  way  truly 
prepares  for  his  coming,  all  the  thoughts  and 
enterprises  of  prophetic  Israel  that  are  capable 
of  contributing  to  the  mind  and  work  of  Christ, 
all  in  the  literature  and  life  of  that  great  race 
that  can  be  taken  up  into  the  soul  of  the  Lord, 
is  taken  up,  and  thereby  receives  vindication. 
This  is  the  meaning  of  the  exposition  given  to 
the  Jewish  doctors  before  his  death,  and  that 
other  made  to  the  bewildered  disciples  after  the 
resurrection:  "Ye  search  the  Scriptures,  because 
ye  think  that  in  them  ye  have  eternal  life :  and 
these  are  they  which  bear  witness  of  me;"  and 
"  beginning  from  Moses  and  from  all  the  prophets, 
he  interpreted  to  them  in  all  the  Scriptures  the 
things  concerning  himself."^  The  final  signifi- 
cance of  the  Old  Testament  is  its  unconscious 
spiritual  anticipation  of  Christ,  and  Christ  is 
forever  the  judge  of  its  ethical  worth  and  limit. 
Whoever,  therefore,  is  armed  with  the  mind  of 
the  Master  can  settle  the  spiritual  question  for 
himself.  The  historical  problem  is  for  the  scholar, 
and  a  thousand  generations  of  experts  cannot 
hope  to  give  the  final  solution.  Progress  will  be 
made  toward  this  goal  in  every  generation,  and 
the  advance  is  marked  and  exhilarating  even 
now.     There  is,  however,  a  question  concerning 

^  John  V.  39 ;  Luke  xxiv.  27. 


THE  CRITICISM  OF  LIFE.  161 

the  Bible,  both  Old  Testament  and  New,  which 
scholarship  cannot  answer.  That  question  is 
raised  by  the  ethical  need  and  judgment  of  man- 
kind, and  it  can  be  settled  with  absolute  justice 
only  as  the  standard  ethical  and  religious  mind 
is  fully  applied  to  the  entire  biblical  literature. 
The  man  who  is  full  of  the  mind  of  Christ  is 
dependent  upon  no  authority  to  declare  to  him 
the  portions  of  his  Bible  that  are  truly  the  reve- 
lation of  God ;  he  has  an  unction  from  the  Holy 
One,  and  understands  for  himself. 

The  criticism  of  life  in  its  highest  earnestness 
is  infinitely  harder  to  bear  than  that  of  the  in- 
tellect. Christian  people  think  of  the  groups  of 
learned,  acute,  ambitious,  and  undevout  men  in 
the  universities  of  Germany  and  Great  Britain 
and  America,  and  they  fear  for  the  Bible  in  their 
hands.  They  seldom  reflect  that  such  tests  are 
insignificant  beside  those  applied  to  this  book  by 
noble  life  under  the  sense  of  inadequacy  for  its 
task.  It  is  said  that  the  drowning  man  will 
clutch  at  a  straw,  but  this  he  will  not  do  if  there 
is  anything  more  substantial  to  clutch.  The  real 
and  terrible  test  of  the  Word  of  God  is  applied 
by  the  sinner  who  cries  out  for  forgiveness,  by 
the  spirit  crushed  with  the  consciousness  of  moral 
infirmity  in  the  presence  of  eternal  ideals,  by  the 
heart  imder  the  shadow  of  a  great  sorrow,  by  the 
soul  looking  in  bewilderment  into  worlds  beyond 
time.     When  one  sees  men  going  to  the  Bible 


162  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

with  an  awakened  conscience,  turning  its  pages 
in  the  hope  that  they  may  inspire  a  purpose  that 
will  hold  in  the  mortal  struggle  with  temptation, 
listening  for  its  voices  of  comfort  that  they  may 
weep  no  more,  and  looking  for  its  light  in  the 
thick  darkness  of  death,  then  one  begins  to  trem- 
ble for  the  fate  of  the  great  book.  If  it  can 
bear  the  strain  of  the  intensest  and  noblest  life, 
it  can  smile  at  all  other  tests.  The  intellectual 
trial  of  the  Bible,  compared  with  the  moral,  is  as 
insignificant  as  the  arrows  and  shells  which  the 
Lilliputians  shot  at  Gulliver  would  be,  placed 
beside  the  missiles  of  a  modern  battle-ship.  The 
great  thing  about  the  Bible  is,  not  that  it  can 
survive  the  assaults  of  hostile  criticism,  but  that 
it  is  able  to  endure  the  assaults  of  life.  And 
this  it  has  been  able  to  do  because  it  has  carried 
the  minds  of  men  beyond  itself.  The  Bible  owes 
infinitely  more  to  Christ  than  Christ  does  to  the 
Bible.  Take  him  out  of  it,  make  him  no  longer 
accessible  through  it,  and  it  would  become  at  once 
no  more  than  a  splendid  antiquity.  It  is  his 
presence  in  it,  mystic  in  the  Old  Testament,  his- 
toric in  the  New,  real  and  divine  in  both,  that 
has  given  it  all  its  power;  and  its  endurance  of 
the  vast  moral  trial  to  which  the  successive  cen- 
turies of  earnest  men  have  subjected  it  comes 
from  the  Lord.  If  one  retains  him  in  it,  and 
reaches  him  as  the  wisdom  of  God  through  it, 
the  Bible  will  continue  to  sustain  the  weight  of 


BOOKS   WITH  A  HISTORY.  163 

the  whole  earnest  world.  The  most  terrible  critic 
is  not  the  undevout  scholar,  but  the  man  who 
wants  standing  in  the  truth  and  assurance  of 
eternal  reality. 

The  Bible  has  a  literary  history.  It  was  pro- 
duced in  certain  parts,  in  certain  places,  at  cer- 
tain times,  and  by  certain  men,  and  it  has  come 
down  embodied  in  many  distinct  literary  forms. 
Here,  again,  is  the  field  for  pure  scholarship;  in 
this  region  nothing  but  learning  is  of  any  account. 
It  is  simple  impertinence  for  one  who  is  not  an 
expert  to  venture  upon  an  answer  to  these  ques- 
tions. But  the  Bible  has  a  spiritual  history 
which  should  be  of  immense  account  with  noble 
men,  and  which  should  give  the  utmost  assurance 
of  safety  to  believers  in  it  as  the  record  of  the 
supreme  revelation  of  God  to  mankind,  while 
that  record  is  under  the  tests  of  free  criticism. 
As  to  the  spiritual  vitality  of  the  Scriptures,  as 
to  their  power  of  survival,  history  has  a  word  to 
speak  of  no  uncertain  sound.  Time  is  the  gTeat 
judge.  The  day,  if  it  is  long  enough,  will  re- 
veal what  is  perishable  and  what  is  imperishable. 
Men  and  books  that  have  no  history  are  to  be 
considered  carefully.  The  fashion  of  the  world  is 
strong,  and  it  passes  away  and  leaves  one  with 
the  supposed  hero  an  exposed  charlatan,  with  the 
imagined  literary  treasure  become  a  vexation  of 
the  spirit.  Ben  Jonson  gives  as  title  to  one  of 
his  plays  "The  Devil  is  an  Ass."     The  proposi- 


164  A  SUPBEME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

tion  is  absolutely  true,  but  it  has  taken  a  long 
time  for  mankind  to  arrive  at  the  conclusion,  and, 
judging  from  strong  appearances,  a  considerable 
minority  have  not  yet  arrived.  History  is  an 
ethical  process,  an  increasing  source  of  spiritual 
illumination,  and  its  judgment  is  precious  for 
individual  faith  and  guidance  beyond  all  esti= 
mate.  There  were  many  public  men  in  the  time 
of  Edmund  Burke  who  were  considered  his  equals, 
if  not  greatly  his  superiors;  but  a  hundred  years 
of  thinking  have  assigned  him  a  position  as  be- 
yond question  the  greatest  political  thinker  in 
Britain  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  Milton's 
age  there  were  many  poets  ranked  in  popular 
esteem  above  him,  but  two  hundred  years  of  re- 
flection have  worn  the  gilt  off  the  common  iron 
of  their  work,  and  burnished  the  gold  of  his.  It 
has  taken  Shakespeare  many  generations  to  reach 
his  throne.  The  lion  was  for  a  long  time  con- 
cealed from  the  public  eye  by  the  bears  and 
monkeys  of  the  great  show  that  crowded  all  the 
conspicuous  places.  Upon  the  brow  of  the  peer- 
less dramatic  genius  of  the  modern  world  time 
has  set  the  crown.  And  Dante's  preeminence, 
so  evident  to-day,  became  indisputable  only  after 
the  lapse  of  centuries.  He  rises  from  amid  the 
lights  of  his  generation  as  a  star  of  the  first 
magnitude  rises  from  among  the  camj^-fires  on 
some  hillside.  For  a  considerable  time,  the  camp- 
fire  appears  greater  than  the  heavenly  body;  it 


THE   WOBB   OF  GOD.  165 

seems  a  compliment  almost  too  great  to  be  be- 
stowed to  put  both  in  tbe  same  class.  But  as 
the  evening  advances  the  star  ascends;  and  when 
the  lower  lights  are  out,  it  is  shining  in  the 
zenith.  These  are  hints  of  the  service  of  history 
in  making  indisputable  the  ethical  and  religious 
preeminence  of  the  Bible.  It  has  had  a  vital 
cosmopolitan  trial  of  two  thousand  years ;  it  comes 
attested  by  time  as  the  spiritual  treasure  of  man- 
kind. It  comes  laden  with  the  gratitude  of  the 
brave,  covered  with  the  homage  of  the  seer,  and 
perfumed  with  the  love  of  the  suffering  men  and 
women  whom  it  has  lifted  into  peace.  It  has 
survived  all  fashions,  and  has  in  its  favor  the 
verdict  of  history.  Time  has  proved  it  to  be  the 
child  of  the  Eternal,  the  Word  of  God  to  our 
world  for  all  the  ages.  This  is  but  another  way 
of  saying  that  it  is  the  transcendent  judgment  of 
Christ  that  reveals  the  real  worth  of  the  Bible, 
and  that  conserves  it  for  mankind. 

The  Bible,  then,  is  safe,  both  in  the  greater 
moral  trial  and  in  the  slighter  intellectual,  be- 
cause Christ  is  in  it.  Behind  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  his  Divine  Person,  and  if,  as  I  believe, 
the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  is  right,  behind 
the  Old  Testament,  back  of  the  life  of  historic 
humanity,  beyond  the  dim  beginnings  of  our  race 
upon  this  planet.  Not  upon  a  literature,  com- 
posed although  it  is  of  inimitable  biography, 
wonderful    history,    inapproachable    psalm    and 


166  A   SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

prophecy,  rests  our  belief;  not  in  a  record  of  a 
divine  ministry,  made  up  as  it  is  of  priceless 
evangelical  narrative  and  glowing  epistle,  stands 
our  faith,  but  upon  the  Spirit  that  produced 
these,  upon  the  Person  who  did  the  works,  who 
brought  into  existence  the  facts,  and  who  revealed 
the  eternal  moral  order  of  God  of  which  the  Tes- 
taments, Old  and  New,  are  but  an  incomplete 
version.  1 

n. 

When  one  comes  to  the  region  of  theological 
theory,  a  high  Christology  is  even  of  greater  im- 
portance. The  higher  criticism  is  nothing  but 
a  grand  preliminary.  It  consists  of  introduction, 
and  does  not  profess  to  raise,  much  less  to  settle, 
a  single  fundamental  question  of  faith.  It  pro- 
fesses to  be  but  the  true  reading,  oftener  but  the 
approximation  to  the  true  reading,  of  the  records 
that  enshrine  the  ancient  revelation.  It  does 
not  come  even  within  sight  of  the  philosophi- 
cal problems  inhering  in  the  very  nature  of  the 

^  ^\Tiat  the  higher  criticism  has  done  in  the  way  of  making' 
possible  new  approaches  to  the  greater  minds  of  the  Okl  Testa- 
ment is  well  illustrated  in  two  familiar  hooks,  Dr.  Cheyne's 
"  Jeremiah,"  and  Dr.  G.  A.  Smith's  "  Isaiah."  It  would  he  diffi- 
cult to  name  a  hook  fuller  of  insight,  sympathy,  and  construc- 
tive imagination  than  the  first ;  and  it  woidd  he  equally  difficult 
to  instance  a  richer  development  of  the  mind  of  two  great  pro- 
phets than  the  second.  The  work  that  Dr.  A.  B.  Bruce  has  done 
for  the  mind  of  the  New  Testament  is  of  a  parallel  character, 
and  it  would  have  been  impossible,  hut  for  the  achievements  of 
historical  criticism. 


HIGHER   CBITICISM  PRELIMINARY.       167 

self -disclosure  of  God  to  man.  It  is  a  necessary- 
work,  and  one  eminently  respectable  and  laudable, 
both  as  regards  the  talents  and  accomplishments 
called  for  in  the  critic  and  the  results  estab- 
lished; but  where  the  higher  criticism  ends,  true 
theological  thinking  begins.  A  great  deal  of 
credit  is  due  to  the  higher  critics,  but  too  much 
distinction  must  not  be  heaped  upon  them.  Some 
of  them  have  received,  for  purely  preliminary 
and  exceedingly  innocent  inquiries,  honor  enough 
"to  sink  a  navy."  There  is  in  progress  a  move- 
ment vastly  more  important  than  that  which  is 
the  special  concern  of  the  higher  criticism,  and 
that  is  the  total  reconstruction  of  theological  the- 
ory in  fearless  logical  accord  with  the  truth  of 
the  Incarnation. 

The  coming  generation  of  Christian  scholars 
must  be  alive  to  the  great  questions  of  religious 
thought.  They  must  have  a  theology;  they  must 
ascertain  what  are  the  realities  of  the  universe. 
If  human  history  is  the  only  path  of  approach  to 
these  realities,  they  must  ask  what  are  the  ulti- 
mate meanings  of  history.  They  must  find  what 
the  highest  life  of  the  race  says  of  God,  —  his 
character,  his  government  of  the  world,  his  pur- 
pose in  man,  and  his  whole  relation  to  mankind. 
The  cry  to-day  is  for  work  upon  the  fundamen- 
tals, —  for  answers  to  the  great  final  questions  as 
to  the  reality  of  God,  the  certainty  of  his  compas- 
sionate interest  in  the  human  race,  and  the  truth 


168  A  SUPREME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

of  the  high  prophetic  consciousness  that  proclaims 
itself  the  revealer  of  the  Divine  Mind.  It  is  as 
builders  of  the  house  of  the  Lord  for  the  believer 
and  worshiper  of  to-day  that  the  coming  gener- 
ation of  Christian  ministers  must  go  forth.  One 
need  not  fear  a  resurrection  of  the  old,  finished 
theological  system.  For  that  there  can  be  no 
resurrection.  The  present  ideal  is  not  the  mediae- 
val castle,  but  the  cathedral.  It  is  ever  beau- 
tiful for  worship,  great  for  service,  sublmie  as  a 
retreat  from  the  tumult  of  the  world,  and  it  is 
forever  unfinished.  The  staging  is  never  down, 
for  any  length  of  time,  from  every  part  of  it. 
Constructions  and  reconstructions  are  continu- 
ally going  on;  the  vast  historic  edifice  is  fitted 
to  the  needs  of  the  present  hour.  This  is  the 
type  for  the  builder  of  Christian  ideas.  He  is  to 
rear  a  temple  to  match  the  new  light,  the  new 
need,  the  new  age ;  and  it  is  to  be  forever  uncom- 
pleted, a  symbol  of  the  unfinished  work  of  the 
Christian  intellect,  a  prophecy  of  the  building 
that  is  to  come,  a  growing  image  of  the  house 
not  made  with  hands,  eternal,  in  the  heavens. 

This  is  the  work  of  the  Christian  thinker,  and 
his  constructive  principle  is  the  mind  of  Christ. 
Without  that  guiding  truth  he  can  do  nothing, 
but  with  it  he  can  accomplish  all  things.  The 
greatest  service  of  the  higher  criticism  is  that  it 
forces  the  believer  from  the  Bible  to  Christ.  The 
current  historical  criticism  of  the  Old  and  New 


CHRIST S  TRANSCENDENCE.  169 

Testaments,  and  the  dissatisfaction  of  the  reli- 
gions mind  with  the  theologies  of  the  past,  and 
the  multitude  of  questions  working  in  the  serious 
spirits  of  the  day  concerning  the  whole  character 
of  Christianity,  are  serving,  in  the  good  provi- 
dence of  God,  to  make  unmistakable  the  one  cen- 
tral and  perpetually  creative  principle  in  Chris^ 
tian  faith,  —  the  eternal  transcendence  of  Christ. 
This  fact  is  forced  upon  one  by  all  proper  study 
of  the  New  Testament,  and  by  all  true  insight 
into  Christian  history.  The  one  heresy  which 
the  church  should  forever  dread  is  the  identifica- 
tion of  the  mind  of  the  Christian  centuries  with 
the  total  mind  of  Christ.  A  Christ  totally  repro- 
ducible in  the  thought  of  a  Paul  or  a  John,  or  in 
the  entire  history  of  the  church  on  earth,  is  not 
the  Christ  of  God.  To  think  of  the  absolute 
reproduction  of  Christ  in  the  life  of  humanity  is 
to  think  of  putting  the  ocean  into  a  teacup. 
The  fullness  of  the  Infinite  is  in  him,  and  when 
he  becomes  immanent,  by  the  power  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  in  the  life  of  the  world,  he  will  still  be  the 
flying-goal  of  man's  love  and  joyous  pursuit,  he 
will  still  remain  the  eternal  transcendent  human- 
ity of  God. 

It  may  be  well  to  put  this  principle  of  the 
transcendence  of  Christ  to  test  in  one  great  exam- 
ple. The  Lord's  Supper  was  a  commemoration 
of  the  death  of  Christ;  it  was  a  form  of  com- 
munion with  the  living  Christ;  it  was,  besides,  a 


170  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

sublime  anticipation  of  the  return  of  Christ.  "Till 
he  come!"  —  these  are  the  words  that  utter  its 
final  and  infinite  meaning.  This  expectation  of  the 
return  of  Christ  was  founded  upon  the  ex23licit, 
repeated,  and  solemn  promise  of  the  Master  him- 
self. Did  he  keep  his  promise  to  his  church? 
Was  the  apostolic  expectation  of  his  speedy  re- 
turn fulfilled?  Here  is  one  of  the  great  test 
questions  of  to-da.y,  the  test  of  faith  and  of  in- 
sight. For  myself  I  must  say  that  I  believe  that 
Christ  ke^^t  his  word  to  his  church,  and  that  the 
primitive  anticipation  was  realized.  How  other- 
wise can  one  explain  the  change  that  passed  over 
the  character  of  the  eleven?  How  can  one  ac- 
count for  the  courage  and  love  and  self-denying 
enthusiasm  that  now  possess  them?  Can  there 
be  a  greater  proof  of  the  return  of  Christ  than 
the  reconstructed  character  of  his  followers? 
Could  any  bodily  appearance  amount  to  evidence 
of  this  kind  ?  Is  not  the  disinterested  mind  the 
supreme  proof  of  the  presence  of  the  Lord  ?  And 
there  is  Pentecost.  Is  not  Peter  right  in  regard- 
ing it  as  the  token  of  Christ's  power?  In  the 
new  religious  movement  that  followed  in  Samaria, 
must  not  one  see  the  Master  on  a  second  and 
greater  journey  through  that  outcast  province? 
There  is  the  conversion  of  Saul  of  Tarsus.  The 
vision  of  the  Christ  coming  in  the  world  is  the 
only  rational  explanation  of  that  momentous  trans- 
formation of  faith  and  character.     There  is  the 


THE  SECOND  ADVENT.  Ill 

new  Christian  movement,  wide  as  the  bounds  of 
civilization,  under  this  apostle  and  his  fellow- 
laborers.  Here,  again,  the  meaning  of  the  im- 
posing course  of  events,  if  it  has  any,  lies  wholly 
in  the  return  of  the  Lord.  Thus,  with  history  as 
guide,  one  may  affirm,  with  the  deepest  assurance, 
that  the  Master  redeemed  his  pledge  to  his  disci- 
ples, and  that  the  primitive  hope  was  fulfilled. 

But  the  question  comes.  Was  this  the  sense  in 
which  the  primitive  church  believed  that  Christ 
would  return?  The  answer  is,  that  it  was  not. 
The  apostolic  expectation  was  that  the  Lord 
would  return  in  the  body  within  the  lifetime  of 
the  first  generation  of  believers.  This  was  the 
universal  form  of  the  faith.  The  form  was 
wrong;  the  faith  itself  was  profoundly  right. 
What  is  the  meaning  of  this  admission?  That 
the  apostolic  disappointment  was  a  divine  sur- 
prise, that  Christianity  proved  itself  vaster  and 
more  spiritual  than  even  Paul  could  comprehend, 
that  Christ  was  other  and  infinitely  more  than 
the  total  apostolic  mind  that  set  him  before  the 
world.  At  the  first,  Jesus  was  misunderstood 
by  his  disciples;  later  he  was  misrepresented  by 
his  countrymen,  and  through  his  entire  ministry 
he  was  ever  the  uncomprehended.  Even  in  the 
happier  epoch  in  the  life  of  the  apostles  that  fol- 
lowed the  resurrection  and  ascension,  he  remained 
other  and  infinitely  greater  than  their  thought  of 
him.    Stephen's  speech  brought  new  light ;  Peter's 


172  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

experience  witli  Cornelius  was  a  personal  illumi- 
nation; Paul's  profound  insight  wrought  great 
and  beneficent  changes  in  the  primitive  appre- 
hension of  Christ;  and  John's  brooding  spirit 
added  richness  and  range  to  the  final  apostolic 
conception  of  the  Lord.  But  what  was  true  at 
the  first,  is  true  at  the  last.  The  Christ  in  the 
mind  of  the  New  Testament  writers  is  not  the 
total  Christ  of  God.  If  the  Lord  is  what  the 
church  has  from  the  beginning  believed  him  to 
be,  the  Eternal  in  time,  it  is  simply  inconceivable 
that  either  gospel,  or  epistle,  or  Christian  his- 
tory, or  all  together,  should  be  an  adequate  repro- 
duction of  him.  There  can  never  be  an  adequate 
reproduction.  The  greatness  of  Christ  must  be 
the  surprise  of  the  centuries;  the  last  hours  of 
time  must  have  for  their  romance  the  fresh  un- 
veilings  of  his  majesty ;  and  the  perpetual  delight 
of  the  everlasting  future  must  be  the  ever  grander 
discovery  of  his  significance.  When  the  Master 
becomes  immanent  in  our  whole  humanity  up  to 
the  limit  of  its  growing  capacity,  the  residue  of 
his  being  will  still  be  infinite.  This  is  the  idea 
indispensable  to  the  Christian  thinker  of  to-day. 
With  the  conviction  in  his  heart  of  the  eternal 
transcendence  of  Christ,  he  will  be  free  as  an 
interpreter  of  the  New  Testament;  he  will  be 
pre23ared  for  inadequacy  even  in  the  teachings 
of  a  Paul  or  a  John ;  he  will  feel  that  he  must 
become  a  critic  as  well  as  a  disciple  of  Christian 


FAITH  AND  ITS  FORMS.  173 

history ;  and  lie  will  look  to  the  future  with  rich- 
est anticipations,  since  the  courses  of  time,  like 
the  rivers  that  flow  into  the  sea,  can  only  add  to 
the  church's  sense  of  the  infiniteness  of  the  Lord. 
The  insight  obtained  into  the  Person  of  Christ, 
through  the  apostolic  conception  of  the  second 
advent,  yields  this  great  principle.  The  apostolic 
failure  was  the  apostolic  beatitude.  It  was  the 
clear  assertion  that  their  Master  was  infinitely 
more  and  better  than  their  highest  thought. 
Their  failure  casts  no  suspicion  upon  their  inspi- 
ration ;  it  simply  makes  it  evident  that  they  were 
finite  beings  dealing  with  the  Infinite. 

This  principle  holds,  of  course,  over  the  entire 
field  of  belief,  and  through  the  whole  course  of 
time.  The  apostles  were  right  and  wrong  at  the 
same  time  in  their  faith  about  the  return  of  their 
King.  The  faith  itself  was  right;  the  form  was 
mistaken.  The  Christian  centuries  have  been  in 
converse  with  the  eternal  Humanity  of  God.  That 
is  the  thread  of  gold  on  which  the  souls  of  be- 
lievers are  strung.  That  is  the  ground  of  iden- 
tity between  the  earliest  generation  of  disciples 
and  the  latest.  There  has  been  a  positive  appre- 
hension, an  indubitable  grasp,  of  the  one  Infinite 
Christ;  but  the  modes  in  which  he  has  been  con- 
ceived, the  forms  through  which  he  has  been 
known,  have  ever  been  inadequate.  The  revision 
of  theological  opinion  has  been  constant;  the 
process  must  go  on  while  the  Lord  the  Spirit  con- 


174  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

tinues  to  come  in  the  life  of  humanity.  A  the- 
ology approximately  and  provisionally  adequate  is 
all  that  one  can  hope  for,  —  is  indeed  all  that 
one  can  wish.  As  the  increase  in  wealth  calls 
for  a  larger  treasury,  so  the  accumulation  of 
Christ  in  the  consciousness  of  mankind  demands 
more  intellectual  room.  The  Lord  is  at  hand, 
and  as  he  comes  he  changes  all  things;  that  is 
the  everlasting  glory  of  the  Christian  faith.  And 
no  believer  can  have  the  courage  to  be  as  radical 
as  the  times  require  who  is  without  this  convic- 
tion of  the  transcendence  of  his  Master.  Only 
the  man  who  holds  the  unreproducible  Christ  will 
search  the  evangelical  record  as  it  should  be 
searched,  with  utter  devoutness  and  absolute  free- 
dom; only  he  will  compare  the  total  apostolic 
mind  as  it  appears  in  the  epistles,  as  the  compar- 
ison should  be  made,  in  the  veneration  of  love 
and  in  the  integrity  of  the  historical  spirit;  only 
he  can  traverse  aright  the  vast  field  of  Christian 
dogma,  with  homage  for  the  reality  of  the  faith 
of  all  the  centuries,  and  with  fearless  criticism  of 
its  various  forms;  and  only  he  will  rejoice  to 
anticipate  the  revisions  to  which  his  own  opinions 
shall  be  subjected  in  the  future  fuller  illumina- 
tion from  the  Lord.  Thus  far,  in  modern  times, 
the  truth  of  the  Incarnation  has  been  used  only 
in  a  negative  way,  to  kill  certain  forms  of  belief 
repugnant  to  Christian  feeling.  The  employ- 
ment of  it,  as  the  positive  constructive  force  in  all 


THE  INCARNATION.  175 

valid  Christian  thought,  has  been  felt  as  a  neces= 
sity  only  in  recent  times,  and  it  is  not  difficult 
to  see  some  of  the  immediate  changes  for  the 
better  which  must  result  from  this  method  of 
theological  speculation. 

The  truth  of  the  Incarnation,  the  reality  of  the 
introduction  of  the  mind  of  God  into  the  world 
in  the  consciousness  of  Jesus,  is  the  creative 
source  of  all  theology.  And  yet,  strange  to  say, 
the  Incarnation,  the  consciousness  of  Christ,  has 
never  been  made  to  yield  fully  and  logically  its 
doctrine  of  God.  What  one  must  regret  in  read- 
ing the  history  of  theological  opinion  is  the  ab- 
sence of  a  truly  Christian  conception  of  God.  In 
the  highest  devotional  or  confessional  literature 
the  absoluteness  of  God  is  indeed  always  present. 
When  a  noble  soul  has  an  offering  to  make,  a 
tribute  to  give  to  the  Infinite,  the  object  of  ado- 
ration and  trust  must  stand  in  the  vision  as 
perfect.  Only  toward  eternal  excellence  can  the 
intelligent  human  spirit  let  out  its  entire  capacity 
of  veneration  and  love  and  life.  One  cannot 
behold  what  Augustine  beholds  in  his  Confes- 
sions and  not  join  him  in  utter  homage ;  and  one 
cannot  see  what  he  sees  in  his  strictly  theological 
writings  without  an  irrepressible  protest  against 
the  character  of  his  God.  Man's  consciousness 
is  at  its  highest  in  prayer,  in  adoration,  in  abso- 
lute moral  trust,  and  out  of  that  should  be  elabo- 
rated, in  dependence  upon  a  consciousness  im- 


176  A  SUPREME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

measurably  higher,  his  doctrine  of  the  Supreme 
Being.  Leonidas,  the  father  of  Origen,  —  so  the 
beautiful  story  runs,  —  delighted  with  his  son's 
eagerness  and  aptitude  in  sacred  studies  when 
but  a  child,  used  to  uncover,  not  his  brow,  but 
his  breast,  as  he  lay  asleep,  and  kiss  it  as  already 
a  dwelling-place  of  the  Holy  Spirit.^  Here  is  the 
symbol  for  the  universal  conviction  of  all  great 
Christian  thinkers.  "  The  heart  makes  the  theo- 
logian;" that  is,  the  moral  consciousness  at  its 
highest  is  the  source  of  the  material  out  of  which 
the  speculative  faculty  is  to  rear  its  edifice.  And 
the  criticism  must  be  made  upon  all  the  theolo- 
gians, from  Augustine  to  the  present  day,  who 
have  acknowledged  him  as  their  master,  that  the 
Christian  experience  in  which  the  true  theological 
interest  originates,  the  Christian  consciousness 
that  is  the  source  of  all  valid  thinking  upon  the 
vdtimate  realities  of  the  universe,  has  had  but  an 
incidental  influence  upon  the  character  of  belief. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Augustine  and  An- 
selm  and  Luther,  and  even  Calvin,  all  began  with 
the  profoundest  and  sincerest  acknowledgment  of 
the  absolute  moral  perfection  of  God.  Our  own 
Edwards  is  perhaps  the  most  conspicuous  example 
of  this  moral  origin  of  theology.  His  soul  was 
kindled  into  the  purest  and  most  passionate  love 
through  the  vision  of  the  infinite  and  awful 
beauty  of  his  Maker,  and  under  the  shaping  and 

^  Religious  Thought  in  the  West,  p.  206,  Bishop  Westcott. 


TRADITIONAL  OBTHODOXY.  Ill 

consoling  sovereignty  of  tliis  sublime  thought  he 
lived  his  wonderful  life.  And  yet,  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  theological  opinion,  these  thinkers,  who 
began  with  the  open  vision  of  the  Highest,  defer 
hardly  at  all  to  the  creative  Christian  conscious- 
ness. This  is  their  common  colossal  defect;  they 
make  but  incidental  use  of  the  consciousness  of 
Christ  in  the  determinations  of  theological  opin- 
ion. 

They  are  not  wholly  without  excuse.  However 
willing  the  nobler  members  of  the  great  group 
might  have  been  to  elaborate  a  better  theology, 
the  impulse  seemed  under  hopeless  condemnation. 
Exegesis  was  held  to  be  against  it,  the  facts  of 
life,  and  the  common  notion,  that  had  all  the  force 
of  a  first  principle,  that  the  redemptive  scheme 
was  wholly  confined  to  this  world.  With  all 
the  books  of  the  Bible  as  of  practically  equal 
authority,  texts  might  be  quoted  ahnost  without 
number  against  a  nobler  theology;  and  with  the 
assumption  that  the  day  of  grace  was  limited  to 
this  world,  the  awful  facts  of  human  history  were 
simply  incompatible  with  an  optimistic  creed. 
Any  one  who  has  ever  moved  within  the  narrow 
circle  of  traditional  orthodoxy  will  recall  the 
hopeless  puzzle  that  the  world  presented,  —  will 
remember  how  impossible  it  was  to  allow  an 
important  influence  to  the  nobler  influences  of 
the  Christian  heart,  or  even  seriously  to  entertain 
them.     The  heart  was  deceitful  above  all  things 


178  A   SUPBEME    CHRISTOLOGT. 

and  desperately  wicked ;  and,  besides,  a  thousand 
texts  could  be  marshaled,  and  the  whole  dark 
side  of  human  history,  including  all  the  murder- 
ers from  Cain  downwards,  and  all  the  traitors 
from  Judas  Iscariot,  and  against  these  witnesses 
feeling  must  be  silenced. 

The  generations  are  now  emerging  from  this 
millennium  of  sore  bondage;  they  are  coming 
from  under  the  vast  shadow  that  has  been  so 
heavy  upon  the  heart  of  man  into  the  light  of  the 
cross.  The  creative  principle  of  theology  is  now 
recognized  as  lying  in  these  words:  "He  that 
'hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father."^  Too  long 
the  character  of  the  Father  has  been  at  a  disad- 
vantage as  compared  with  that  of  Christ.  Here 
truly  we  are  indebted  to  Unitarianism.  The  won- 
derful grasp  upon  the  principle,  the  reality  of  the 
Divine  Fatherhood  that  appears  in  the  works  of 
Maurice,  which  have  silently  revolutionized  the 
theology  of  all  parties  in  the  Anglican  church, 
he  obtained  from  the  Unitarians. ^  This  truth  is 
now  seen  to  be  fundamental ;  and  the  high  source 
of  it  is  the  consciousness  of  Christ.  It  is  when 
this  Supreme  Consciousness  in  time  is  pressed  that 
there  is  obtained  the  final  characterization  of  the 
Supreme  Consciousness  above  time ;  and  all  texts 
of  Scripture  and  facts  of  human  history  that  seem 
to  rise  in  contradiction  of  the  absolute  goodness 

^  John  xiv.  9. 

2  King-dom  of  Christ,  vol.  i.  p.  135. 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  REALITY.  179 

of  God  must  be  considered  with  the  mood  of  true 
science,  but  with  entire  emancipation  from  old 
notions  and  fears.  The  crying  need  to-day  is  for 
a  theology,  a  working  philosophy  of  life,  accordant 
with  the  deliverance  concerning  God  made  by  the 
consciousness  of  Christ.  There  are  still  many 
difficulties  in  the  way;  but  it  is  believed  that  they 
are  no  longer  insuperable.  At  all  events,  believ- 
ers are  here  face  to  face  with  the  dread  alternative. 
Outside  the  conventional  and  comfortable  circles 
of  belief,  the  great  strain  comes  at  this  point.  The 
question  is  not  whether  Christ  is  good  enough  to 
represent  the  Supreme  Being,  but  whether  the 
Supreme  Being  is  good  enough  to  have  Christ  for 
his  representative.  John  Stuart  Mill  looks  upon 
the  Christian  religion  as  the  worship  of  Christ 
rather  than  the  worship  of  God,  and  in  this  way 
he  explains  the  beneficence  of  its  influence.^  The 
mood  is  still  prevalent  among  those  who  view 
nature  as  Mill  did,  who  perpetuate  his  warm 
humanity,  and  who  share  his  solicitude  over  the 
highest  interests  of  mankind.  We  must  either 
abandon  our  Christianity  as  the  revelation  of  the 
Infinite,  renounce  it  as  the  message  of  the  Eter- 
nal, cease  to  regard  it  as  in  any  sense  a  valid 
and  trustworthy  characterization  of  the  Ultimate 
Reality,  or  we  must  go  on  to  the  construction  of 

1  ' '  For  it  is  Christ,  rather  than  God,  whom  Christianity  has 
held  up  to  believers  as  the  pattern  of  perfection  for  humanity." 
Essays  on  Religion,  p.  253. 


180  A  SUPREME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

individual  existence  and  social  life,  liuman  his- 
tory and  the  universe,   by  means  of  its  highest 
principle,  —  the  consciousness  of  Christ.     Those 
who  are  not  ready  to  admit  that  Christ  and  the 
nature  of  things  are  in  final  and  fatal  contradic- 
tion, who  are  not  willing  to  follow  the  men  who 
would  make  our  religion,  with  its  divine  vision 
and  exhaustless  ethical  power,  only  a  temporary 
human  entertainment  within   the   circles   of   an 
iron  and  brutal  necessity,   a  sublime  illusion  of 
beings  under  the  irrevocable  sentence  of  death, 
a  mere    interlude  between   the    spasm  in  which 
all   high  life  originates  and  that  in  which  it  is 
annihilated,  must  make  a  new  use  of  the  princi- 
ple by  which  they  are  able  to  resist  a  skepticism 
so  absolute.     The  science  that  has  been  in  the 
ascendant  for  the  last  fifty  years  has  been  setting 
at  variance  the   creed   of   Christianity  and   the 
nature  of  things.     The  most  influential  of  these 
scientific  leaders,   having  obtained  their  ethical 
standards  from  Christ,  and  having  found  them  at 
war  with  the  courses  of  nature,  have  closed  their 
debate  with  the  affirmation  that  the  highest  ethics 
have  no  basis  in  extra-himian  reality,  —  have  in 
fact  nothing  to  look  for  from  the   Infinite  but 
endless  hostility.     This  deduction  of  the  ethical 
scientist  should  be  significant  for  the  Christian 
theologian.     It  should  lead  him  to  raise  the  ques- 
tion whether  his  religion   is  but  a   magnificent 
subjective  dream,  a  wonderful  anaesthetic  for  one 


THEOLOGY  AND  SCIENCE.  181 

who  must  pass  under  the  knife  of  reality,  the  fine 
art  by  which  life  otherwise  in  agony  beats  itself 
into  the  eternal  sleep,  or  the  revelation  of  the 
meaning  of  history,  the  disclosure  of  the  charac- 
ter of  God.  It  should  lead  him  to  reflect  that 
perhaps,  if  he  had  made  a  better  use  of  the  great 
constructive  principle  of  Christian  faith,  if  he 
had  pressed  from  the  consciousness  of  Christ 
God's  plan  for  mankind,  he  might  have  carried 
over  the  whole  expanse  of  human  interests  an 
illumination  so  great  that  these  conclusions  of  the 
ethical  scientist  would  have  been  impossible.  As 
the  case  stands,  theology  is  as  vast  and  as  lurid 
a  denial  of  the  objective  worth  of  the  mind  of  the 
Master  as  the  extremest  form  of  modern  scien- 
tific speculation.  Take  any  one  of  the  great  sys- 
tems, from  that  of  Augustine  to  that  of  the  latest 
champion  of  New  England  theology,  and  compare 
it,  thought  for  thought,  position  for  position,  with 
the  consciousness  of  Christ,  and  it  will  appear 
that  if  the  one  is  true  the  other  cannot  be.  The 
result  has  been  that  in  traditional  orthodoxy,  the 
highest  in  Christianity,  the  absoluteness  of  the 
Divine  Love  has  always  been  under  the  suspicion 
of  unreality,  while  the  terrible  theology  has  seemed 
the  true  version  of  the  ultimate  fact.  This  is  not 
said  in  any  feeling  of  disrespect  for  the  great 
leaders,  to  whom  society  at  large  is  under  the 
deepest  obligations.  It  is  said  that  the  suffer- 
ings of  our  fathers  may  not  have  been  in  vain, 


182  A  SUPBEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

that  their  vital  fight  with  the  Ephesian  beasts 
may  not  prove  without  profit  to  their  descendants, 
and  that  the  progress  which  has  been  the  inspira- 
tion of  all  the  Christian  centuries  may  acquire  a 
new  momentum,  or,  realizing  the  eternal  obstruc- 
tion in  its  path,  may  vex  itself  no  longer  with 
foolish  hopes. 

The  consciousness  of  Christ  as  the  authentic 
revelation  of  the  character  of  the  Infinite  is  the 
great  beginning  of  theology.  The  present  im- 
perative call  is  for  the  fearless  logical  use  of  this 
fundamental  idea.  Whatever  revisions  it  may 
require  in  Old  Testament  teaching,  or  if  need  be 
in  apostolic  deduction;  above  all,  whatever  sur- 
renders are  necessary  in  the  traditional  theology, 
—  should  be  cheerfully  made  .  The  supremacy  of 
Christ  is  at  stake,  and  nothing  must  be  allowed 
to  stand  in  the  way  of  that.  Nothing  short  of  a 
scheme  that  holds  God  for  humanity  can  answer 
to  the  present  and  logical  call.  Out  of  our  crea- 
tive principle,  if  it  is  to  be  accepted  as  trustwor- 
thy, must  come  a  new  working  philosophy.  The 
world  is  larger  than  once  it  was ;  history  is  much 
longer;  the  enterprise  of  Christianity  is  immea- 
surably greater,  and  the  vital  necessities  of  the 
case  demand  a  vaster  interpretation.  The  phi- 
losophy of  Christianity,  born  amid  the  wreck  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  renewed  in  the  grand  contest 
with  the  corrupt  church  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and 
that  seemed  adequate  to  the  narrow  world  of  the 


THE  NEW  PHILOSOPHY.  183 

Puritan,  is  to-day  totally  inadequate  in  view  of 
the  magnitude  of  the  Christian  task.  The  sense 
of  history,  and  the  conviction  that  Christianity 
has  a  cosmopolitan  mission,  are  bound  to  work 
out  a  new  theology,  in  which  the  new  shall  be 
that  which  was  true  from  the  beg^innino:. 

In  a  general  way,  it  is  easy  enough  to  say  what 
the  ruling  philosophy  of  human  life  must  be, 
where  the  consciousness  of  Christ  is  accepted  as 
the  measure  of  the  truth.  There  are  but  two 
contrasted  constructions  of  the  fundamental  rela- 
tion of  mankind  to  the  Infinite.  The  Ausfustin- 
ian,  the  Calvinistic,  the  Edwardean,  has  occupied 
the  field  for  fifteen  centuries.  It  is,  amid  all 
its  variations,  a  partialistic  scheme.  In  it  God 
sincerely  contemplates  only  the  selection  of  a 
number ;  the  gospel  is  not  a  gospel  for  mankind ; 
the  call  of  the  Spirit  is  not  to  the  race;  God's 
intention  includes  only  a  remnant.  This  is  the 
metaphysics  of  Latin  Christianity  from  first  to 
last;  its  grim  logic,  avowed  or  unavowed;  its 
horrible  finality  for  the  world.  A  restricted  elec- 
tive decree;  a  conception  of  human  nature  in 
total  dissociation  from  the  Divine,  until  reclaimed 
by  the  new  creative  act  of  regeneration ;  a  limited 
atonement;  irresistible  grace  for  those  to  whom 
it  is  given,  and  their  perseverance  unto  salvation, 
—  these  ideas  form  a  coherent  scheme.  Out  of  the 
choice  of  the  Eternal,  restricted  to  a  certain  num- 
ber, follow  in  logical  sequence  the  various  posi- 


184  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

tions  of  this  partialistic  interpretation  of  man's 
relation  to  God.  The  feeling  toward  Calvin,  that 
so  many  men  of  wide  acquaintance  with  ecclesias- 
tical history  deplore,  mainly  it  would  seem  on  the 
principle  of  the  poet,  — 

"  Vice  is  a  monster  of  so  frightful  mien, 
As  to  be  hated,  needs  but  to  be  seen ; 
Yet  seen  too  oft,  familiar  with  her  face. 
We  first  endure,  then  pity,  then  embrace." 

—  is,  after  all,  sound  and  infinitely  significant. 
For  John  Calvin  has  given  the  most  logical  and 
aggressive  exposition  to  the  scheme  that  contem- 
plates the  salvation  only  of  a  part  of  mankind. 
Modifications  of  this  philosophy  of  the  relation 
of  our  race  to  God  can  never  mean  much.  So 
long  as  it  stands,  God  is  against  humanity.  The 
modified  Calvinist  will  admit  at  once  that  salva- 
tion is  always  by  the  will  of  God;  and  he  must 
likewise  admit  that  perdition  is  by  the  same 
power.  Such  is  the  final  philosophical  horror 
that  the  disciple  of  John  Calvin,  however  modi- 
fied, is  compelled  to  face.  This  is  the  ultimate 
blasphemy  of  thought  in  which  our  Western  civ- 
ilization has  been,  for  the  most  part,  living  these 
fifteen  hundred  years.  This  is  the  house  of  faith 
divided  against  itself  in  which  men  of  God  have 
been  dwelling,  —  the  fundamental  eternal  dualism 
that  has  become  a  Niagara  current  to  atheism  for 
the  serious,  and  a  monmnental  excuse  for  excess 
for  the  foolish.     This  is  the  great  competitor  for 


LOGICAL   THOROUGHNESS.  185 

continued  empire  over  the  thoughts  of  Christian 
men  and  women ;  and  it  is  the  acceptance  or  re- 
jection of  this  entire  scheme  with  which  believers 
in  Christ  are  confronted.  Modifications  are  a 
mean  disguise  of  the  issue ;  they  have  become  an 
abomination.  One  will  answer  the  call  of  the 
human  reason  and  conscience  by  them  as  soon 
but  no  sooner  than  one  can,  to  borrow  the  words 
of  another,  "stop  the  leak  in  a  frigate  with  a 
porous  plaster."  One  of  the  two  contrasted  and 
competing  constructions  of  the  ultimate  relation 
of  mankind  to  the  Infinite  is  the  partialistic 
scheme.  Under  that  philosophy  men  must  live, 
ministers  must  preach,  and  the  church  must  do 
her  work,  or  under  its  absolute  opposite.  The 
tumult  of  the  time  has  a  fundamental  philosophi- 
cal meaning.  The  agitation  is  not  simply  over 
the  higher  criticism:  it  has  its  deepest  source  in 
the  suspicions  as  to  what  that  movement,  destruc- 
tive of  the  letter  of  Scripture,  may  come.  The 
extreme  conservatives  apprehend  a  theological 
revolution ;  they  are  appalled  at  the  prospect  of 
a  philosophy  of  Christianity  that  shall  be  radi- 
cally at  war  with  that  which  they  believe  to  be 
the  truth.  Their  suspicion  is  well  founded.  The 
issue  to-day  is  between  the  faith  that  holds  God 
for  the  remnant  and  that  which  sees  in  him  the 
hope  of  mankind.  It  is  not  primarily,  or  even 
necessarily,  a  difference  in  eschatology;  for  es- 
chatology  concerns  only  the  distant  end  of  the 


186  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

stream  of  finite  being.  The  question  goes  to  the 
fountain-head  of  life  and  faith:  it  asks  for  a 
statement  of  the  relation  of  God  to  our  race;  it 
receives  two  answers,  and  one  of  these  is  the  his- 
toric declaration  that  the  Eternal  is  for  a  portion 
of  mankind  and  against  the  rest. 

Now,  in  the  case  of  one  who  believes  that  the 
consciousness  of  Christ  is  the  creative  and  regu- 
lative source  of  all  theology,  this  partialistic 
scheme  must  be  forever  abandoned.  For  such 
a  believer,  the  universe  must  be  held  to  be  on 
the  side  of  humanity,  the  whole  sweep  of  the  Di- 
vine purpose  must  be  conceived  as  favorable  to 
mankind.  If  the  decree  of  the  Infinite  is  to  be 
inferred  from  Christ,  it  must  be  an  inclusive 
decree.  Some  will  be  first  and  some  last,  one 
will  be  elected  to  lead  and  another  to  follow ;  but 
all  will  be  chosen  for  service,  all  for  the  beatific 
vision.  That  many  passages  may  be  quoted  from 
the  Old  Testament  against  this  inclusive  election 
need  trouble  no  one;  for  one  has  only  to  remem- 
ber that  the  deepest  of  all  Israel's  sins  was  her 
failure  to  understand  the  Divine  election.  That, 
too,  is  the  limitation  to  her  highest  prophetic 
thought,  although  here  and  there  it  is  tran- 
scended. Many  texts  may  be  adduced  from  the 
New  Testament  against  the  idea  of  a  Divine 
choice  inclusive  of  humanity,  but  these  isolated 
passages  must  be  read  in  the  light  of  the  great 
declaration  of  John:    "And  this  is  the  message 


THE  HOLY.  SPIRIT.  187 

which  we  have  heard  from  him,  and  announce  unto 
you,  that  God  is  light,  and  in  him  is  no  darkness 
at  all."^  If  Christ's  mind  is  authoritative  and 
final,  if  his  mission  is  to  the  world,  if  Christian- 
ity is  the  absolute  religion,  the  purpose  of  God 
must  include  humanity.  This,  then,  is  the  first 
great  conception  that  the  consciousness  of  Christ 
yields.  God  is  for  humanity,  the  Creator  is  on 
the  side  of  his  creature. 

From  this  high  conviction  that  the  Infinite  has 
a  purpose  of  love  and  mercy  for  the  entire  race, 
a  new  conception  of  the  sphere  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
must  result.  Narrow  views  here  brino-  the  vari- 
ous  utterances  of  the  New  Testament  into  hope- 
less contradiction.  If  the  Holy  Spirit  was  not 
given,  in  any  measure,  until  after  the  ascension 
of  Jesus,  what  shall  be  said  of  the  affirmation, 
"  For  no  prophecy  ever  came  by  the  will  of  man : 
but  men  spake  from  God,  being  moved  by  the 
Holy  Ghost"?  2  The  promise  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
to  the  apostles  and  to  the  church  is  not  of  some- 
thing absolutely  new;  it  is  of  a  new  and  final 
form  of  the  Eternal  Presence  with  mankind.  The 
career  of  Christ  —  his  teaching,  ministry,  char- 
acter, passion,  death,  resurrection,  and  ascension 
—  is  the  filial,  absolute  form  of  the  coming  of 
the  Holy  Spirit ;  and  in  that  sense  the  gift  was 
new.  But  in  another  sense  the  Holy  Spirit  has 
always  been  in  the  world  since  man  became  man. 
1  1  John  i.  5.  12  Peter  i.  21. 


188  A  SUPBEME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

The  imperishable  element  in  the  Old  Testament, 
according  to  all  Christian  belief,  is  the  product 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  Hebrew  Bible,  in  so  far 
as  it  contains  permanent  interest  for  the  human 
soul,  and  permanent  power  over  human  society, 
is  the  unimpeachable  witness  that  the  Spirit  of 
God  was  with  men  before  the  advent  of  Christ. 
If  in  the  Hebrew  civilization,  why  not  in  the 
Persian,  Assyrian,  Egyptian,  and  Indian?  If 
the  sacred  books  of  these  various  peoples  are  wit- 
nesses to  the  fact  that  God  has  been  from  the 
beginning  speaking  to  them,  why  should  Chris- 
tians hesitate  to  believe  it?  The  advent  into  the 
growing  circle  of  scholarship  of  the  religions  of 
the  world ;  the  sympathetic  study  of  these  moving 
and  amazing  symbols  of  the  aspiration  of  the 
ancient  world ;  the  discovery,  in  cruder  forms,  of 
many  of  the  thoughts  and  hopes  and  venerations 
that  enter  into  the  highest  modern  faith;  and  the 
reverent  reading  of  these  early  chapters  in  the 
Book  of  Life,  —  lead  naturally  and  inevitably  to 
the  conviction  that  the  age  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is 
the  age  of  man,  and  that  the  sphere  of  his  opera- 
tion is  our  entire  humanity.  This  great  modern 
study  of  the  religions  of  the  world  is  bound  to 
result  in  the  belief  that  the  Eternal  has  always 
been  searching  the  hearts  of  men.  Then,  too,  the 
whole  altruistic  side  of  human  life  is  a  witness  to 
the  same  fact.  Against  pure  sensuousness,  and 
against  mere  success  as  a  food-getter  as  constitut- 


WHAT  KEEPS  HUMANITY  ALIVE?        189 

ing  the  chief  good  of  man,  there  has  been  a  pro- 
test from  the  beginning.  Ideals  of  courage  and 
friendship  and  love  have  been  guiding  our  race 
from  time  immemorial.  A  body  of  morality  has 
grown,  among  every  people,  proclaiming  other 
things  than  material  success  to  be  essential  to 
human  life.  He  reads  the  records  of  the  world's 
history  with  blind  eyes  who  does  not  find  there 
the  consciousness,  however  dim  and  crude,  that 
man  cannot  live  by  bread  alone.  The  amount  of 
altruistic  capacity  required  to  run  the  domestic 
and  civic  economies  of  primitive  man  is  by  no 
means  inconsiderable;  the  fund  of  courage  and 
friendship  by  which  the  ancient  world  was  kept 
going  is  amazing;  and  the  overwhelming  testi- 
mony to  the  presence  of  God  with  men  to-day  is 
not  that  suj^plied  by  the  churches.  One  becomes 
aware  of  it  when  one  asks.  What  keeps  humanity 
alive?  What  is  the  source  of  the  brotherhood 
that  is  growing  the  world  over,  and  that,  too,  in 
the  presence  of  a  thousand  inducements  to  an- 
archy and  brutality?  Why  is  it  that  the  maxim 
of  the  murderer,  Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?  is 
being  repudiated  everywhere,  and  with  a  deepen- 
ing abhorrence?  What  keeps  the  race  in  even 
its  present  supply  of  altruistic  feeling?  To  keep 
our  modern  world  running;  to  retain  even  the 
civilization  that  we  have;  to  insure  the  perma- 
nence of  domestic,  social,  and  civic  bonds;  to 
hold  the  race  from  dispersion,  and  in  the  power  of 


190  A  SUPREME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

its  true  humanity ;  to  enable  it  to  carry  forward 
the  vast  enterprise  of  life,  —  the  fund  of  unselfish- 
ness and  of  positive  conserving  love  absolutely 
indis2)ensable  is  something  amazing.  Crime  and 
vice  and  meanness  and  inhumanity  are  inconsist- 
ent with  the  business  of  living;  they  are  contra- 
dictions of  the  great  human  movement,  and  they 
are  the  exceptions.  The  race  is  not  to  be  judged 
from  its  criminal  and  vicious  classes,  nor  from 
its  Pharisees.  These  are  the  extreme  perversions 
of  its  purpose,  the  notorious  and  exceptional  ene- 
mies of  its  onward  march.  The  race  has  a  work 
of  justice  and  mercy  and  humanity  on  its  hands, 
and,  poorly  as  the  work  is  done,  the  performance, 
such  as  it  is,  demonstrates  a  race  alive  with  God. 
The  idealizations  of  love  and  patriotism ;  the  ven- 
erations of  the  sjanpathies  and  pieties  that  one 
finds  in  the  songs  of  Burns,  that  interpret  the 
human  heart  the  world  over,  and  that  are  abso- 
lutely essential  even  to  such  social  and  domestic 
and  civic  life  as  mankind  possess,  —  are  an  im- 
pressive attestation  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  The  saints  are,  indeed,  the  crown  of  our 
humanity;  but  if,  outside  the  saints,  beyond  the 
churches,  in  the  swarming  populations  of  the 
extra-Christian  world,  the  Divine  Life  is  wholly 
absent,  despair  is  the  only  rational  mood.  It  is 
a  source  of  vast  annoyance  to  find  in  that  mag- 
nificent roll-call  of  faith,  the  eleventh  chapter  of 
Hebrews,  the  names  of  Rahab  and  Samson.     It 


THE   UNITY  OF  THE  SPIRIT.  191 

seems  an  insult  to  faitli  to  suppose  that  Raliab 
could  do  anything  that  needed  the  inspiration  of 
the  Spirit  of  God,  or  that  Samson  in  the  perform- 
ance of  his  feats  stood  in  any  relation  of  depend- 
ence to  the  Divine.  But  this  is  simple  fastidious- 
ness and  utter  superficiality.  The  publicans  and 
the  harlots  are  candidates  for  the  Kingdom  of 
God,  because  the  necessities  of  their  humanity, 
and  the  work  that  they  have  never  wholly  aban- 
doned, keep  them  open  to  the  Eternal.  Man  as 
a  spiritual  being  is  constituted  by  the  Holy 
Spirit;  his  nature  as  man  implies  the  constant 
presence  of  the  Divine,  and  the  total  lapse  of  man 
from  God  would  be  the  fall  into  brutehood.  In 
the  unity  of  the  Spirit,  —  here  is  the  great  crite- 
rion. Unity  is  the  supreme  witness  for  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Divine.  In  himself  man  is  a  con- 
scious personal  unity;  he  rises  above  the  flow  of 
sensations,  and  builds  them  into  the  temple  of 
knowledge ;  he  transcends  the  impulses  that  make 
him  the  foe  of  his  kind,  and  constructs  an  idea  of 
good  that  puts  him  in  fellowship  with  his  kind ; 
and  out  of  this  fellowship  come  the  institutions 
that  mark  mankind,  —  the  communion  of  the 
home,  the  business  cooperation,  the  combinations 
for  the  ends  of  science,  and  art  and  philosophy,  the 
federation  of  communities  into  nations,  and  the 
gathering  of  the  nations  in  the  church  of  Christ, 
into  the  consciousness  of  humanity.  The  entire 
stupendous  movement  is  the  overwhehning  wit- 


192  A  SUPEEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

ness  to  tlie  fact  of  the  universal  diffusion  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  flowing  from  the  inclusive  elective 
decree. 

From  this  conviction  of  the  universal  gift  of 
the  Divine  Sj)irit,  it  follows  that  revelation  is  a 
fact  coextensive  with  mankind.  The  heavens 
declare  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  firmament 
showeth  his  handiwork  to  all  peoples ;  and  the  law 
of  the  Lord,  written  upon  the  heart,  interpreted 
through  the  inspirations  of  genius  and  embodied 
in  decalogue  and  prophecy  and  psalm,  likewise  is 
a  universal  revelation.  The  ultimate  significance 
of  all  knowledge  concerns  the  Infinite;  and  all 
true  knowledge,  therefore,  must  be  revelation. 
If  man  cannot  live  by  bread  alone,  if  he  requires 
the  Word  of  God,  that  Word  must  have  been 
present  with  him,  as  the  provision  for  his  spirit, 
from  the  beginning ;  and  when  the  Word  became 
flesh  and  tabernacled  among  men,  it  was  but  the 
grand  consummation  of  the  historic  process  of 
revelation.  From  the  universality  of  revelation, 
the  meaning  of  regeneration  becomes  plain.  It 
must  mean  the  victorious  assertion,  through  the 
power  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  of  the  aboriginal  moral 
endowment  of  man.  A  high  ethical  doctrine  can 
alone  make  the  profound  meaning  of  this  belief 
intelligible.  The  best  introduction  to  the  study 
of  it  is  a  course  in  the  ethics  of  Plato,  Epictetus, 
Butler,  and  Kant.  There  is  a  non-sensuous,  a 
non-animal,  a  rational  and  divine  side  to  human 


BEGENEEATION.  193 

life.  The  fundamental  trouble  with  man  is  that 
he  is  not  consistent  with  himself;  he  is  not  living 
in  accord  with  the  plan  of  his  being.  He  has 
fallen  from  a  sublime  moral  unity  into  a  miser- 
able dualism;  and  his  problem  is  the  victorious 
assertion  of  the  aboriginal  spiritual  principle. 
Regeneration  is  not  a  new  creation  in  the  sense 
of  a  new  endowment ;  it  is  the  reenthronement 
of  the  moral  ideal,  invested  with  the  meaning  of 
Christ's  life,  and  clothed  with  the  authority  of 
the  Holy  Spirit.  And  the  atonement,  if  it  is  to 
remain  a  vital  part  in  the  working  philosophy 
of  a  living  church,  must  be  gathered  from  the 
mind  of  Christ,  and  construed  through  the  enlight- 
ened Christian  conscience.  Grounds  of  agree- 
ment between  God  and  man,  since  God  is  a  Spirit 
and  man  is  made  in  his  image,  must  be  transac- 
tions in  the  Spirit.  The  sacrifice  of  Christ  has 
its  meaning  here  ;  it  is  through  the  Eternal 
Spirit.  1 

From  the  inclusive  Divine  decree  there  follow 
these  positions  of  faith  that  have  just  been  named 
concerning  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  extent 
of  revelation,  the  meaning  of  the  new  birth,  and 
the  method  of  approach  to  the  significance  of  the 
atonement.  But  one  of  the  greatest  changes  of 
belief,  following  from  the  universal  Divine  voca- 
tion of  mankind,  concerns  the  meaning  of  his- 
tory.    If  the  mmd  of  Christ  is  to  be  trusted  as 

1  Hebrews  ix.  14. 


194  A  SUPBEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

tlie  true  revelation  of  tlie  purpose  of  the  Infinite, 
history  can  be  but  another  name  for  the  redemp- 
tive process.  And  history  means  something  im- 
measurably greater  than  it  did  even  fifty  years 
ago.  The  scientific  computations  respecting  the 
length  of  time  that  man  has  been  upon  this 
planet  may  amount  to  no  more  than  guesses,  but 
the  facts  upon  which  they  are  based  have  abol- 
ished the  traditional  guess  of  six  thousand  years. 
We  must  extend  the  time  perhaps  to  fifty  or 
even  a  hundred  thousand  years.  We  have  to 
reckon  with  the  stupendous  problem  that  history 
thus  extended  presents  to  Christian  faith.  The 
only  possible  solution  is  that  which  sees  in  the 
evolutionary  process  the  redemptive  movement  of 
God.  If  one  believes  in  a  Christian  God,  one 
must  find  a  Christian  interpretation  of  human  his- 
tory. It  is  impossible,  without  self -stultification, 
to  consider  the  question  of  salvation  only  from 
the  modern  point  of  view,  or  to  rest  content  when 
the  process  is  followed  back  into  the  civilization 
of  Israel.  We  have  a  pre-Hebrew,  a  prehistoric 
world  of  unimaginable  extent  and  impressiveness 
to  confront,  a  world  beside  whose  populations  the 
inhabitants  of  the  entire  historic  period  are  but 
as  a  drop  to  the  ocean.  It  is  incapacity  or  un- 
willingness to  face  this  immemorial  past,  with  its 
countless  multitudes  of  suffering  men  and  women, 
that  is  temjDting  Christian  thinkers  to  revive  the 
old  doctrine  of  a  restricted  election  under  the 


CONDITIONAL  IMMORTALITY.  195 

scientific  formula  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
and  to  add  to  it  the  new  paganism  of  conditional 
immortality.  The  past  is  too  great  and  too  brutal 
to  bring  within  the  compass  of  the  redemptive 
movement  as  traditionally  conceived;  and  the 
simplest  way  out  of  the  difficulty,  according  to  the 
logic  of  certain  writers,  is  to  suffocate  these  mul- 
titudinous swarms  of  prehistoric  humanity,  tak- 
ing good  care  to  preserve  for  our  own  pious  uses 
whatever  honey  they  may  have  hived,  in  the  way 
of  laborious  invention,  noble  custom,  sacred  insti- 
tution, and  sweet  conquest  over  the  wild  forces 
of  nature.  In  return  for  the  immeasurable  bene- 
fits which  we  have  inherited  from  the  prehistoric 
world,  we  are  asked  to  exclude  them  from  the 
elective  decree,  and  to  add  to  that  the  new  dofmia 
of  conditional  immortality.  If  this  is  not  a  near 
approach  to  cannibalism,  one  would  like  to  know 
what  is !  The  courage  and  the  capacity  to  face 
this  new  problem  that  history  sets  before  the 
church  to-day  are  necessities  of  the  life  of  Chris- 
tian faith.  And,  as  has  already  been  said,  there 
can  be  but  one  solution.  The  redemptive  process 
must  include  the  whole  historic  movement.  Time, 
with  its  entire  content  of  humanity,  must  be  the 
subject  of  that  process  of  salvation  whose  con- 
summate expression  is  the  cross  of  Christ,  and 
whose  origin  is  in  the  Eternal  Fatherhood. 

There  are  two  serious  questions  raised  by  this 
view  which  keep  many  persons  from  embracing 


196  A  SUPBEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

it,  and  wliicli  must  now  be  noticed.  The  first 
comes  when  one  considers  the  low  moral  average 
of  human  life,  especially  in  the  heathen  world  of 
to-day,  and  under  the  ancient  civilizations.  When 
one  thinks  of  the  swarming  populations  of  man- 
kind, of  the  masses  that  live  almost  wholly 
outside  the  religious  sphere,  of  the  crowds  that 
cannot  be  said  to  lead  even  a  conventionally 
moral  existence,  of  the  mighty  populations  that 
are  still  in  the  swamps  of  animalism,  and  who, 
judged  by  an  ideal  ethical  standard,  have  little  or 
no  worth  for  one  another,  it  is  difficult  to  regard 
their  history  as  a  redemptive  process;  it  is  hard 
to  cover  them  with  the  purpose  of  the  Eternal. 
Relief  comes  when  one  remembers  that  hmnanity 
has  its  value  chiefly  for  God.  It  touches  his 
compassion ;  it  appeals  to  his  wisdom ;  it  calls  out 
his  Fatherhood ;  it  moves  him  to  undertake  for  it ; 
it  becomes  in  its  helj)lessness  one  vast  mode  of 
realizing,  in  an  historic  process,  the  love  and  the 
pity  of  the  Infinite.  The  several  thousands  of 
infants  in  any  large  city  have  no  immediate  value 
for  one  another.  If  they  were  brought  together 
into  some  great  room,  one  would  give  to  another 
no  sympathy,  no  help.  The  chief  immediate 
value  of  these  infants  is  to  their  parents,  their 
friends,  the  older  generation,  and  the  human 
heart  of  the  city  where  they  live.  They  cry  out 
for  help,  they  develop  sympathy,  they  move  pity, 
they  elicit  a  great  body  of  tender  love,  they  give 


MAN  CONCERNS   THE  INFINITE.         197 

realization  to  man's  fondest  dreams,  and  convert 
into  character,  through  a  vital  process,  some  of 
the  richest  and  deepest  forces  in  the  soul.  It  is 
no  slight,  therefore,  upon  these  helpless  lives,  to 
say  that  they  are  of  value  chiefly  for  humanity ; 
and  it  is  no  libel  upon  humanity  to  affirm  that  it 
has  worth  mainly  for  God.  The  hosts  of  toilers 
and  sufferers,  fighting  for  existence  amid  the  hard- 
est conditions,  caring  nothing  for  science  or  liter- 
ature or  philosophy,  and  having  little  time  even 
for  religion,  cannot  be  said  to  possess  any  clear, 
developed,  deliberately  wrought  out,  established 
moral  character.  Such  morality  as  they  have  is 
largely  instinctive;  and  ethical  worth  is  not  the 
conspicuous  merit  of  mankind  either  in  prehis- 
toric times  or  in  the  best  historic  periods.  The 
differentiating  mark  of  human  life  is  that  it  con- 
cerns the  Infinite.  No  man  lives  unto  himseK, 
and  no  man  dies  unto  himself;  that  is,  every  man 
lives  and  dies  unto  the  Lord.  Man's  supreme 
relationship  is  to  the  Eternal,  his  final  accounta- 
bility is  to  God,  rhe  ultimate  significance  of  his 
entire  existence  reaches  to  the  Divine  conscience. 
And  therefore  a  man's  wrong-doing  can  never  be 
mere  brutality.  His  lie,  his  lust,  his  cruelty  and 
sordidness,  cannot  be  a  mere  repetition  of  the 
cunning,  the  foulness,  the  fierceness,  and  the  dull 
indifference  to  truth  and  beauty  and  moral  ideals 
that  one  finds  in  the  brute.  Man's  wrong-doing 
is   never   simple    brutality;    neither    is   it    mere 


198  A  SUPBEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

crime,  something  clone  against  the  law  of  the 
state ;  nor  is  it  only  vice,  something  done  in  con- 
tempt of  the  social  sentiments  of  the  commu- 
nity. It  may  be  brutal,  vicious,  criminal;  but 
it  is  infinitely  more.  It  is  sin;  it  is  done  against 
God.  So,  too,  man's  error  is  not  the  mistake  of 
an  animal ;  it  is  the  wandering  of  a  child  of  God. 
Human  thoughts  are  the  concern  of  the  Absolute 
Mind,  as  human  acts  are  the  concern  of  the  Abso- 
lute Conscience.  It  follows  that  man's  sufferings 
are  not  merely  so  much  pain  endured  by  crea- 
tures of  flesh  and  blood,  confined  in  its  meaning 
to  this  poor  world,  in  whose  markets  the  agony 
and  bloody  sweat  of  souls  has  not  even  a  quota- 
ble value.  The  American  nation  never  could 
have  passed  through  the  great  slavery  agitation, 
never  could  have  gone  through  the-  war  with  its 
terrible  drain  upon  sympathy,  treasure,  and  blood, 
if  there  had  not  been  lodged  in  the  national  heart 
the  conviction  that  the  whole  tragic  movement 
concerned  the  Almighty.  That  conviction  gave 
dignity  to  its  error,  momentousness  to  disloyalty, 
solemnity  to  the  national  purpose,  and  an  infinite 
sanctity  to  the  sacrifice  through  which  the  coun- 
try was  redeemed.  Another  great  consequence 
of  the  belief  that  man  has  value  chiefly  for  God 
is  human  as  opposed  to  restricted  immortality. 
Why  is  it  that  the  oceans  that  lie  so  loosely  upon 
the  unprotected  outside  of  the  planet  do  not  leave 
it  and  pour  in  wild  floods  through  space?     Be- 


ESSENTIAL  SONSHIP.  199 

cause  tliey  lie  so  close  to  its  heart,  and  move 
witliin  the  sphere  of  its  motion ;  because  they  are 
fastened  to  their  places,  and  made  an  everlasting 
part  of  the  earth  through  its  ceaseless  revolutions. 
The  planet  must  stop,  or  break  into  fragments, 
before  these  oceans  can  be  displaced  or  lose  their 
life.  And  in  the  same  way  humanity  stands 
within  the  compass  of  God's  thought,  lies  within 
the  circuit  of  his  love,  dwells  in  the  very  move- 
ment of  his  spiritual  power,  and  is  thus  forever 
swept  onward  in  his  companionship.  Constitu- 
tional sonship  to  God  is  the  basis  of  human 
immortality;  when  this  becomes  moral  sonship, 
assurance  becomes  much  greater.  But  moral  son- 
ship,  that  is,  actual  sympathy  with  God's  purpose 
on  man's  part,  is  available  only  for  the  merest 
handful  of  souls.  If  that  doctrine  is  true,  hu- 
manity goes  to  wreck,  and  only  a  few  leading 
spirits,  the  captain  and  officers  of  the  stupendous 
sunken  craft,  are  saved.  In  view  of  the  length 
and  fullness  of  human  history,  in  the  presence  of 
the  consciousness  of  Christ  as  revealing  the  char- 
acter of  God,  such  an  opinion  is  simply  incredi- 
ble. It  is  conceived  in  utter  isolation  from  the 
problem,  and  born  in  the  wilderness  of  despair. 
It  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  those  who  fail  to  cover 
humanity  with  the  Eternal  purpose,  and  who 
refuse  to  regard  history  as  the  process  of  redemp- 
tion because  of  the  low  moral  average  of  human 
character,  and  of  the  sins  and  crimes  that  have 


200  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

flooded  the  courses  of  time,  to  say  that  mankind 
from  its  worst  to  its  best,  apart  from  the  Divine 
Man,  has  worth  chiefly  for  God.  The  worst  per- 
son in  all  history  is  something  to  God,  if  he  is 
nothing  to  the  world. 

The  second  question  is  more  serious  still.  If 
one  shall  regard  history  as  but  another  name  for 
the  redemptive  process,  and  if  one  shall  set  that 
process  utterly  free  from  the  limits  of  space  and 
time,  must  not  moral  disaster  result  from  a  plan 
of  salvation  so  latitudinarian  ?  It  is  believed 
widely  that  restrictions  upon  the  sinner's  oppor- 
tunity are  necessary  to  bring  him  to  his  senses, 
and  that  to  assure  him  of  an  unlimited  opportu- 
nity is  a  sop  to  the  traitor  within  him.  Now  I 
believe  that  the  principle  of  salvation,  or  admis- 
sion into  the  kingdom,  can  take  care  of  itself; 
that  no  breadth  or  narrowness  of  theological 
thought  can  touch  it;  and  that  it  is  absolutely 
independent  and  self-sufficient. 

The  principle  of  salvation  gains  nothing  from 
a  narrow  theology.  One  may  speak  of  the  uncer- 
tainty of  life,  affirm  the  momentousness  of  the 
change  of  death,  declare  that  there  is  no  evidence 
that  any  soul  ever  passed  from  evil  to  good  on 
the  other  side  of  the  grave,  draw  in  the  blackest 
forms  the  retributions  of  the  future,  pile  up  the 
lurid  metaphors  until  those  who  listen  feel  as  if 
they  were  on  a  journey  with  Dante  through  his 
Inferno,    and  one  will  not  have   added,    in   the 


SALVATION  ETHICAL.  201 

slightest  degree,  to  the  weight  and  solemnity  o£ 
the  bare  salvation  principle.  Salvation  remains 
utterly,  sternly,  eternally  ethical,  and  more  than 
that  one  cannot  say.  It  is  as  exhibitions  of  the 
ethical  nature  of  the  blessed  life  that  the  grand 
retributive  metaphors  of  Christ  have  a  meaning 
so  awful.  The  worm  that  never  dies,  the  fire 
that  is  unquenched,  the  utter  darkness  full  of 
weeping  and  gnashing  of  teeth,  all  tell  of  one 
thing,  —  the  horror  of  unrighteousness,  the  woe  of 
a  state  which  is  the  negation  of  love,  the  torment 
of  a  mood  which  is  the  affirmation  of  falsehood 
and  iniquity.  One  cannot  make  the  globe  weigh 
any  more  than  it  does  weigh.  One  might  carry 
the  Alps  to  India,  and  the  Himalaya  to  Switz- 
erland ;  thereby  one  will  alter  the  proportions  of 
Europe  and  Asia,  but  one  will  add  nothing  to 
the  mass  of  the  world.  One  may  call  imagina- 
tion into  the  service  and  pack  into  this  old  earth 
a  hundred  other  planets.  The  work  of  imagina- 
tion may  be  sublime ;  but  when  genius  has  thus 
exhausted  its  strength,  the  world  will  weigh  no 
more  and  no  less  than  when  the  mighty  effort 
beo-an.  Christ's  salvation  no  man  can  add  to. 
There  is  but  one  salvation,  and  that  is  righteous- 
ness. No  man  can  get  it  in  any  world  without 
an  agony  and  a  bloody  sweat,  and  whoever  is 
outside  the  moral  movement  into  the  likeness  of 
God  in  Christ,  in  this  world  and  in  all  other 
worlds,  is  outside  salvation.     That  man  is  in  hell. 


202.  A  SUPPiEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

But  if  the  sublime  and  self-sufficient  principle 
of  salvation  cannot  possibly  gain  anything  from 
a  narrow  theology,  it  may  lose  much  in  poj)- 
ular  thought.  Its  great  issue  may  be  obscured. 
When  Lincoln  said  that  this  nation  could  not 
remain  half  slave  and  half  free,  that  it  must 
become  a  country  with  slavery  everywhere  or 
nowhere,  he  defined  the  issue  for  the  whole  peo- 
ple. The  great  debater  refused  to  go  afield  into 
the  ten  thousand  subtleties  and  sophistries  of  the 
slaveholders'  position.  He  simply  presented  the 
radical,  unalterable  issue.  If  he  had  piled  round 
it  party  politics,  hung  it  with  the  drapery  of  the 
wildest  stump  oratory,  and  mixed  it  with  a  ques- 
tionable political  creed,  he  would  have  done  inex- 
pressible harm  to  his  great  cause.  He  would 
have  obscured  the  issue.  And  this  is  done  when- 
ever a  mediaeval  theology  is  invoked  to  strengthen 
the  motive  to  repentance  and  faith  in  Christ. 
One  thing  only  can  be  accomplished  in  that  way: 
the  grand  issue  can  be  confused.  Salvation  will 
sink  in  the  po23ular  mind  into  a  bargain-  with 
God  through  assent  to  certain  propositions,  into 
a  contract  with  him  through  physical  fear,  into 
a  partnershij)  such  as  prudent  men  may  think  it 
well  to  establish.  Salvation  will  become  a  sort 
of  insurance  policy,  the  premium  to  be  paid  in 
church-going,  the  benefit  to  be  immunity  from 
the  evil  consequences  of  an  intenser  and  more 
unscrupulous  materialism  than  even  men  of  the 


THE  BROADER   THEOLOGY.  203 

world  dare  attempt.  But  if  the  issue  be  defined 
as  Christ  defined  it,  as  simply  and  eternally  a 
question  of  righteousness,  no  soul  can  mistake  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  said  that  nothing 
can  be  taken  away,  by  a  broader  theology,  from 
the  relentlessness  of  the  moral  process  of  salva- 
tion. The  Christian  thinker  of  to-day  has  won 
his  freedom  to  regard  God  as  the  Father  of  all 
men,  to  conceive  of  him  as  eternally  interested  in 
the  whole  race;  and  to  remove  all  limits  of  place 
and  time  from  the  redemptive  scheme  of  Christ. 
He  has  the  right  to  affirm,  if  he  solemnly  believes 
it,  that,  on  this  side  of  death  or  on  that,  God 
and  Christ  and  the  moral  universe  are  unchange- 
ably the  same ;  that  all  the  Divine  punishments 
are  chastisements;  that  God's  final  purpose  in 
scourging  his  children  is  to  bring  them  back  to 
himself;  and  that  even  in  hell  the  worm  must 
gnaw  and  the  fire  burn  in  the  service  of  the 
Eternal  Grace. 

But  all  this  breadth  of  belief  does  not  and  can- 
not change  the  analterable  nature  of  salvation. 
The  words  of  Moses  to  Pharaoh  are  in  point 
here :  "  As  soon  as  I  am  gone  out  of  the  city,  I 
will  spread  abroad  my  hands  unto  the  Lord;  the 
thunders  shall  cease,  neither  shall  there  be  any 
more  hail ;  that  thou  mayest  know  that  the  earth 
is  the  Lord's.  But  as  for  thee  and  thy  servants, 
I  know  that  ye  will  not  yet  fear  the  Lord  God."  ^ 

1  Exodus  ix.  20,  30. 


204  A  SUPREME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

A  merciful  God  did  not  mean  a  converted  king; 
a  changed  divinity  left  a  self -identical  oppressor. 
One  may  change  one's  conception  of  the  Supreme 
Being  from  Moloch  to  our  Father  in  heaven,  from 
the  destroyer  to  the  Saviour  of  mankind ;  but  until 
one  shall  agonize  in  the  conflict  with  passion,  and 
through  heroic  suffering  put  on  the  form  of  right- 
eousness, there  can  be  no  improvement.  The 
thunders  and  hail  of  one  theology  may  give  place 
to  the  sweetness  and  light  of  another;  but  if  the 
oppressor  still  remain  the  oppressor,  the  sinner 
the  sinner,  there  is  no  gain.  The  moral  order  of 
the  world  is  an  ultimate  fact.  The  law  of  en- 
(  trance  into  the  kingdom  is  the  law  of  struggle, 
and  it  is  a  final  necessity  for  every  man.  Below 
everything  are  manhood  and  womanhood.  What 
is  the  character  of  human  purpose  and  endeavor| 
judged  by  the  career  of  Christ?  .  That  is  the  ulti- 
mate question.  The  great  conservative  principle 
of  Christian  theology  is  the  righteousness  with- 
out which  no  man  can  see  the  Lord.  To  call 
one  a  Christian  who  is  without  righteousness,  or 
the  reasonable  hope  of  it,  can  do  one  no  good;  he 
is  outside  the  kingdom.  On  the  other  hand,  to 
affirm  that  the  opportunity  to  become  righteous 
is  eternal  can  do  no  harm  if  the  thing  itseK  be 
defined  as  the  possession,  through  an  eonian  woe, 
of  the  mind,  the  heart,  the  character  of  Christ. 
When  the  grand  issue  is  defined  as  the  possession 
of  the  righteousness  of    Christ,  the    interests  of 


AN  ADEQUATE  THEOLOGY.  205 

morality,  and  the  motives  toward  the  strenuous 
life,  are  safe. 

Thus  the  consciousness  of  Christ  as  the  crea- 
tive principle  in  theology  yields  a  God  for  human- 
ity. It  covers  the  entire  race  with  the  purpose 
of  the  Infinite;  it  interprets  the  moral  ideal- 
ism that  is  inseparable  from  mankind  into  the 
universal  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit;  it  finds 
among  all  peoples  traces  of  that  revelation  of  God 
which  becomes  absolute  in  Christ;  it  looks  upon 
history  as  but  another  name  for  the  redemptive 
process;  and  it  removes  from  this  process  all 
limits  of  place  and  time,  because  it  sees  that  sal- 
vation is  a  principle  utterly  independent.  Here 
the  creative  principle  is  joined  by  the  conserva- 
tive. This  is  a  righteous  universe,  God  is  a 
righteous  God,  and  there  is  no  salvation  to  any 
soul,  in  any  world,  without  participation  in  the 
righteousness  of  God  in  Christ.  All  that  is 
great  in  the  progressive  movement,  and  all  that 
is  essential  in  conservative  belief,  need  but  to  be 
put  under  the  supremacy  of  Christ  to  insure  their 
fruitfulness  and  permanence  in  human  thought 
and  character.  No  theology  can  b^  great  enough 
that  is  not  derived  from  the  consciousness  of  the 
Lord,  and  no  interest  of  mankind  is  unsafe  if  it 
is  in  his  keeping.  ^ 

1  "  Where  was  the  refug-e  from  the  miserable  alternative  (of 
Greek  pantheism  or  Hebrew  transcendence)  for  them  ?  Where 
is  it  for  us  ? 

"  I  believe,  my  brethren,  only  in  the  recognition  of  a  Filial 


206  A  SUPREME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

III. 

Individualism  and  socialism  are  but  parts  of 
the  truth  taken  for  the  whole.  Neither  is  alto- 
gether false;  neither  is  entirely  true.  Each, 
when  pushed  to  its  extreme  logical  expression,  is 
the  destruction  of  the  grand  reality  of  human 
belief  and  life.  Pure  individualism  makes  the 
reality  of  the  universe  impossible.  According  to 
it  there  can  be  no  unity  in  which  all  things  are 
centred,  no  common  fountain  of  being  from  which 
all  particular  life  flows.  The  metaphysics  of 
individualism  is  atomism ;  its  psychology  is  naked 
sensationalism,  psychic  life  minus  the  soul,  the 
impressions  and  ideas  of  Hume  going  through 
their  customary  and  inexplicable  evolutions;  its 
ethics,  unmitigated  self-seeking.  Absolute  indi- 
vidualism is  the  contradiction  of  all  being,  all 
knowledge,  and  all  reality.  Of  this  form  of 
opinion,  whether  as  a  doctrine  of  the  universe  or 
of  man's  life,  Christianity  is  the  eternal  antago- 
nist.    This  fact  is  likely  to  be  obscured  by  the 

Word,  one  with  that  Father  who  is  ahove  all,  speaking'  through 
all  things ;  in  the  -world,  as  St.  John  says,  which  was  made  by 
Him  though  the  world  knew  Him  not ;  actually  God  and  yet 
with  God.  Thus  is  the  dreana  of  Greek  pantheism  substan- 
tiated ;  thus  is  it  reconciled  with  the  sternest  Hebrew  faith  in 
God  as  absolute  and  as  distinct  from  all  his  creatures ;  thus 
are  we  saved  from  the  heartlessness  of  an  all-excluding-  the- 
ology, and  from  the  equal  heartlessness  of  an  all-comprehending 
philosophy."     F.  D.  Maurice,  Sermons,  vol.  vi.  p.  104. 


KIDD'S  "SOCIAL  EVOLUTION:'  207 

wide  and  favorable  reception  accorded  to  Ben- 
jamin Kidd's  "Social  Evolution."  The  vitiat- 
ing defect  of  that  vigorous  book  is  its  individ- 
ualism. The  radical  contradiction  of  the  work 
lies  in  its  moral  socialism  superimposed  upon 
extreme  philosophic  egoism.  Professor  Drum- 
mond  has  contested  Mr.  Kidd's  interpretation  of 
nature,  and  most  readers  will  think  that  he  has 
done  so  in  the  interest  of  truth.  Nature  is  not 
the  realm  of  wild  and  unmitigated  egoism  that 
Mr.  Kidd  seems  to  believe  it  to  be.  Parentalism  ^ 
is  in  nature,  and  that  is  but  another  name  for 
altruism.  The  struggle  for  life  is  not  everything; 
there  is  a  struggle  for  the  life  of  others.  Fur- 
ther, the  selfish  struggle  is  dependent  for  success 
upon  the  unselfish;  the  battle  for  existence  would  ^ 
defeat  itself  in  a  single  generation  were  it  not  for 
the  recruiting  power  of  the  battle  for  the  exist- 
ence of  others.  But  the  second  step  in  Mr. 
Kidd's  discussion  is  still  more  extraordinary,  as 
seen  in  his  notion  of  human  progress.^  The  sum- 
mum  honum  is  simply  the  gratification  of  appetite. 
The  means  of  physical  subsistence  is  the  great 
object  of  quest.  The  ideal  is,  What  shall  we  eat, 
and  what  shall  we  drink,  and  where  withal  shall  we 
be  clothed?  The  biological  problem,  or  one  half 
of  it,  the  battle  for  life  against  a  multitude  of 
competitors,  is  carried  up  and  becomes  our  whole 
rational  j^i'oblem.     Progress  is  naked  mater ial- 

1  Social  Evolution,  ch.  iii. 


208  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

ism,  without  even  tlie  fig-leaves  of  scientific, 
aesthetic,  and  philosophic  interest  to  serve  as  a 
partial  covering.  If  Mr.  Kidd  had  seen  both 
sides  of  the  life  of  nature,  if  he  had  observed 
there  the  parentalism  as  well  as  the  egoism,  his 
biological  importation  would  have  been  very  dif- 
ferent. He  would  then  have  been  able,  in  strict 
fidelity  to  biological  science,  to  define  human  good 
as  having  in  it,  under  its  common  forms,  intellec- 
tual, sesthetic,  and  moral  elements ;  as  made  up 
not  only  of  food  and  clothing  and  shelter,  but 
also  of  a  longing  to  give  and  receive  love  and 
sympathy,  of  a  confederated  endeavor  after  truth 
and  beauty  and  righteousness.  The  biological 
summum  honitm  is  not  simply  life,  but  life  in  the 
wonderful  mutualism  of  the  family  and  the  tribe; 
and  the  chief  good  of  man  cannot  be  lower,  must 
be  higher.  The  next  step  in  Mr.  Kidd's  pure 
individualism  is  exhibited  in  his  treatment  of  rea- 
son. Nature  means  the  struggle  for  existence  in 
lower  animal  forms;  progress  means  the  success- 
ful battle  for  life  among  the  higher  animal  forms, 
that  is,  among  mankind;  and  reason  is  simply 
the  faculty  that  mirrors  the  interest  of  the  hu- 
man Ishmaelite,  and  that  urges  him  to  strengthen 
his  hand  against  all  the  other  hands  that  are 
raised  against  him.  An  unmoral  nature  gives 
birth  to  an  unmoral  man,  and  the  unmoral  man 
seeks  an  unmoral  good  under  the  sanction  of  an 
unmoral   reason.     It   is  plain  that  Mr.    Kidd's 


REASON  ESSENTIALLY  MOBAL.  209 

reason  needs  to  be  converted,  as  it  is  evident 
tliat  his  idea  of  progress  needs  to  be  enriched  and 
transformed,  and  his  conception  of  nature  cor- 
rected.^ Reason  is  the  source  of  our  ideals  of 
truth  and  beauty  and  goodness,  the  fountain  of 
the  whole  altruism  actual  and  possible  in  human 
life ;  it  is  the  creative  centre  of  all  fraternity  in 
the  discovery  of  reality,  of  all  sympathy  in  the 
vision  and  enjoyment  of  the  beautiful,  of  all 
brotherhood  in  the  duty  and  privilege  of  social 
existence.  Reason  is  the  absolute  contradiction 
of  individualism,  2  the  blessed  mother  of  the  forces 

1  "  The  question  all  turns  on  what  we  conceive  to  be  the  essen- 
tial nature  of  man.  Is  he  essentially  a  bundle  of  animal  appe- 
tites and  passions,  supported  for  a  little  while  by  a  framework 
of  bone ;  wrapped  up  for  a  season  in  a  blanket  of  flesh  ;  lighted 
by  a  flickering-  candle  of  intelligence,  just  sufficient  to  show  him 
the  objects  by  which  he  may  gratify  these  animal  appetites  and 
passions  ?  If  the  appetites  are  the  man,  and  intelligence  is  his 
adjunct  and  instrument,  then  indeed  the  antagonism  between 
such  an  individual  and  society  is,  as  Mr.  Kidd  tells  us,  hopeless 
and  irreconcilable ;  and  the  only  hope  of  getting  social  conduct 
out  of  him  is  some  '  ultra-rational  sanction '  which  shall  startle 
him  into  a  wholesome  fear  of  penalties,  or  shock  him  into  a  pru- 
dent concern  for  his  fate  in  the  hereafter.  Such  an  abstract 
individual,  such  an  animal  in  human  form,  however,  nowhere 
exists.  It  is  a  fiction  of  the  imagination  to  which  no  real  being 
corresponds.  JJnus  homo,  nullus  homo  (One  man  is  no  man  at 
all)."     President  Hyde,  Social  Theology,  p.  46. 

^  These  words  were  written  before  the  appearance  of  President 
Hyde's  admirable  book.  Social  Theology ;  it  is,  however,  comfort- 
ing to  be  supported  by  an  independent  witness  of  his  strength. 
*'  Reason  is  the  bond  that  binds  mankind  together."  Social 
Theology,  p.  47. 


210  A  SUPBEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

that  declare  man  to  be  needful  to  man,  that  bind 
life  to  life  and  all  to  the  Infinite.  Knowledge  is 
possible  only  because  reason  converts  the  indi- 
vidual things  of  sense  into  orders  and  classes 
and  kingdoms.  Abolish  reason  and  the  universe 
becomes  an  atomic  universe  with  no  soul,  no 
society,  no  God  anywhere,  and  with  no  need  for 
them.  Mr.  Kidd's  idea  of  the  irreducible  con- 
flict between  individual  and  social  good  is  a 
nightmare  following  upon  a  late  and  heavy  and 
too  exclusive  meal  upon  Humism.  It  rides  him 
into  horrors,  but  then  the  horrors  are  imagi- 
nary. The  postulate  of  the  moral  life  is,  that  the 
true  good  of  all  involves  the  true  good  of  each. 
Christ  was  not  robbed  when  he  was  crucified,  and 
the  penitent  thief  found  the  summuin  homim  u23on 
the  cross.  Every  man  worthy  of  the  name  would 
brand  himself  as  a  coward  and  a  slave  if  he 
should  define  his  good  as  exclusive  of  that  of  his 
fellow-men,  and  he  would  pass  upon  himself  this 
sentence  of  condemnation,  in  every  civilization  of 
which  the  record  remains,  and  in  the  name,  not 
of  an  "ultra-rational"  religion,  but  in  the  simple 
dignity  of  reason  itself.  There  was  a  time  when 
the  theologians  were  the  great  dealers  in  the  mon- 
strous dogma  of  total  depravity;  now  scientific 
writers  are  carrying  on  the  trade. 

This  is  the  philosophic  foundation  upon  which 
Mr.  Kidd  builds  his  social  religion;  and  it  is  the 
overwhelming  conviction  that  uj)on  such  a  basis 


INDIVIDUALISM  AND  FAITH.  211 

there  is  room  for  no  religion  whatever,  that  must 
turn  the  believer  in  Christianity  into  an  uncom- 
promising antagonist  of  the  philosophy  of  this 
remarkable  book.  The  insight  which  the  volume 
embodies  into  the  process  of  social  development, 
and  its  profound  recognition  of  religion  as  the 
ultimate  power  in  all  human  progress;  the  per- 
tinent and  important  criticism  that  it  contains 
upon  the  attitude  of  contemporary  science  toward 
the  deeper  problems  of  life ;  the  sign  of  the  times 
that  the  discussion  is;  the  token  that  the  former 
things  are  passing  away  that  one  must  see  in  it; 
and  the  prophet  of  the  new  century  with  its  fresh 
gift  from  God,  —  cannot  x'econcile  one  to  the  un- 
disguised Humism  of  its  philosophy,  or  mitigate 
one's  opposition  to  a  work  that  provides  no  basis 
for  religion  in  the  nature  of  ascertainable  real- 
ity. Humism  is  logical  individualism,  and  its 
outcome  is  nihilism. 

The  other  extreme  is  socialism,  which  in  its 
turn  disregards  an  essential  part  of  ultimate  real- 
ity. It  loses  sight  of  the  reality  of  the  individ- 
ual. Its  metaphysics  is  pantheism,  one  Eternal 
Being  prevailing  over  all,  disregarding  all.  In 
human  affairs  society  is  this  sole  being,  whose 
absolutism  is,  from  the  opposite  extreme,  the 
destruction  of  humanity.  These  are  the  two  ex- 
tremes, the  Scylla  and  Charybdis,  between  which 
the  human  race  must  sail.  For  "neither  social- 
ism nor  individualism  can,  with  any  propriety. 


212  A  SUPEEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

be  accepted  as  the  true  form  of  social  organiza- 
tion, or  its  doctrine  identified  with  sociology,  or 
the  science  of  society."  ^ 

It  is  impossible,  however,  for  any  right-minded 
man  to  witliliold  sympathy  from  the  causes  out 
of  which  socialism,  as  a  doctrine  of  reformation, 
is  born.  The  most  deplorable  of  the  contrasts 
that  exist  in  human  society  are  those  which  con- 
cern life  itself.  When  one  looks  into  the  exist- 
ence of  the  extant  savage  of  to-day,  the  first 
thing  that  impresses  the  beholder  is  the  meagre- 
ness  of  his  life.  History  means  next  to  nothing 
to  the  savage ;  he  is  instructed  and  consoled  by 
no  access  to  the  memory  of  mankind.  The  past 
does  not  gather  for  him  like  clouds  about  the 
setting  sun ;  it  has  no  romance  of  tenderness  and 
no  fund  of  beauty  from  which  to  feed  his  heart. 
Neither  has  he  any  ennobling  sense  of  the  future. 
He  has  no  consciousness  that  he  is  living  at  the 
daybreak  of  the  world,  no  feeling  that  under  his 
eyes  the  spring  of  an  eternal  hope  is  rising;  he 
is  without  the  strength  and  courage  that  come 
from  science;  he  has  no  interest  in  art;  the 
worlds  of  music  and  poetry  are  for  him  non- 
existent ;  and  to  the  greatness  that  comes  of  hold- 
ing and  living  under  a  noble  consistent  thought 
of  the  universe  he  is  an  absolute  stranger.  He 
lives  largely  in  his  appetites,  in  his  unformed 
instincts,  in  barbaric  customs.     The  contrast  ap- 

^  Socialism,  Flint,  p.  19. 


MAN  SAVAGE  AND  CIVILIZED.  213 

pears  at  once  when  one  places  beside  this  savage 
a  representative  of  our  better  modern  life.  The 
first  thing  noticeable  in  this  man  is  the  expan- 
sion and  richness  of  his  interests.  His  sense  of 
history  is  a  constant  source  of  comfort,  and  his 
anticipation  of  the  new  eras  that  are  coming  is 
likewise  an  unfailing  force  in  his  heart.  He 
looks  before  and  after,  and  in  a  noble  sense  pines 
for  what  is  not.  His  worlds  in  space  and  in 
time  are  very  grand,  and  his  imagination  is  under 
the  incessant  and  magnificent  appeal  that  comes 
out  of  the  vast  past  behind  him  and  the  great 
sky  over  him.  Through  the  instrumentality  of 
books,  he  walks  with  the  men  who  lived  at  the 
dawn  of  the  world,  when  the  mornmg  stars  sang 
together  and  all  the  sons  of  God  shouted  for  joy. 
He  migrates  with  Abraham,  leads  Israel  out  of 
bondage  with  Moses,  is  rapt  wdth  Isaiah  in  the 
vision  of  the  Eternal,  goes  abroad  with  the  psalm- 
ists when  their  hearts  are  full  to  hear  them  break 
into  song,  listens  to  Jesus  on  the  Mount  of  Beat- 
itudes, and  keeps  comj)any  with  Paul  and  John 
in  their  great  thoughts  and  enterprises.  Or, 
striking  out  into  another  mighty  civilization,  he 
lives  in  the  wondrous  beauty  of  Homer's  world; 
walks  the  streets  of  Athens  in  the  age  of  Pericles ; 
opens  his  life  to  the  appeal  of  wisdom,  eloquence, 
art,  poetry,  and  a  thousand  rich  and  splendid 
interests.  Following  his  himian  sympathies,  he 
sees  Rome  founded,  looks  upon  Caesar  and  Taci- 


214  A  SUPREME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

tus ;  wends  his  way  clown  the  long,  dark  mediseval 
world;  is  present  at  the  birth  of  the  modern  era; 
hears  Dante  sing;  beholds  Michael  Angelo  build 
and  Raphael  paint;  witnesses  the  magnificent 
pageant  that  Shakespeare  puts  upon  the  stage; 
and  enters  into  the  new  thought,  the  new  science, 
and  the  vaster  life  of  to-day.  The  contrast  be- 
tween the  life  of  this  representative  of  our  better 
modern  civilization  and  that  of  the  savage  is 
simply  overwhelming. 

Now,  it  is  the  consciousness  of  this  contrast 
existing^  within  the  bounds  of  civilization  that  is 
the  deepest  cause  of  the  unrest  and  the  wild 
socialism  of  the  time.  Take,  for  one  member  of 
this  contrast,  one  of  our  wealthier  church  mem- 
bers in  a  great  city.  His  home  is  in  the  best 
part  of  the  city;  he  has  the  means  to  make  it 
beautiful;  he  is  able  to  invite  into  it  those  who 
bring  with  them  intelligence,  refinement,  and 
sympathy;  and  he  can  do  for  his  children  all  that 
it  is  good  for  them  that  he  should  do.  He  has 
had  an  education,  and  that  gives  him*  a  certain 
mastery  of  the  world.  He  commands  an  annual 
revenue  that,  a  few  centuries  ago,  would  have 
made  even  kings  hapj)y.  He  has  books,  and  con- 
siderable leisure  to  make  their  acquaintance. 
Works  of  art  meet  his  vision  almost  every  day 
of  his  life,  and  he  is  under  the  perj)etual  stimulus 
of  elevated  friendships.  He  has  the  church  of 
Christ,    with    its    unspeakable    history,    with   its 


THE  CONTRASTS  IN  LIFE.  215 

power  to  purify  and  strengthen  the  heart,  and 
with  its  sublime  interpretation  of  the  universe 
and  of  man's  place  in  it.  How  abundant  and 
desirable  existence  is  in  the  case  of  this  man! 
Look,  however,  upon  the  other  j)icture.  Think 
of  the  home  in  the  worst  section  of  the  city ;  the 
absence  from  it  of  the  things  that  refine  and 
uplift ;  the  bare  presence  of  the  food  essential  to 
keep  soul  and  body  together ;  the  mother  fighting 
sickness  without  help,  and  battling  without  suc- 
cess against  the  uncleanness  that  besets  her  poor, 
wearied  and  worried  life  at  every  step ;  the  father 
working  from  morning  to  evening,  year  in  and 
year  out,  without  any  prospect  of  catching  up 
with  his  obligations,  under  the  strain  of  toil,  the 
harrow  of  disappointment,  the  iron  despotism  of 
circumstances,  the  poverty  and  meanness  of  his 
\  lot.  What  is  history  to  him  but  a  dead  past? 
What  is  the  future  but  a  place  that  holds  within 
it  a  quiet  grave,  for  whose  peace  he  would  often 
thankfully  exchange  his  present  painfid,  ineffec- 
tual struggle?  Science  means  nothing  for  him 
but  a  new  invention  making  his  work  less  indis- 
pensable. By  art  he  understands  something  that 
idle  fools  talk  about.  Now  and  then,  indeed,  a 
song  of  other  days  reaches  his  heart,  and  gives 
him  the  comfort  of  a  few  tears.  The  Divine 
scheme  of  the  universe  appears  to  him  a  mock- 
ery; or  it  seems  to  have  left  him  and  his  pale- 
faced,  pathetic   children   and  their  poor  mother 


216  A  SUPBEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

outside  of  its  beneficent  movement.  His  uni- 
verse seems  an  Inferno,  and  existence  itself  a 
curse.  Thus  in  the  tremendous  contrast  in  the 
human  life  of  the  civilized  world  is  born  the  rage 
of  those  whose  lives  are  reduced  to  a  shadow  and 
a  mockery  against  those  whose  lives  are  rich  and 
full,  and  who  are  utterly  heedless  of  the  multi- 
tudes whose  hearts  are  wrung  every  day.  In  old 
Athens,  the  rock  on  whose  top  sat  the  court  of 
the  Areopagus,  representing  the  highest  reason 
and  the  best  character  of  the  Athenian  state,  had 
underneath  it  the  Cave  of  the  Furies. ^  The  rock 
that  had  a  summit  so  noble  and  a  base  so  terri- 
ble, that  held  within  its  extremes  the  home  of  a 
benign  order  and  the  Cave  of  the  Furies,  is  the 
symbol  of  the  appalling  contrasts  that  meet  one 
in  the  life  of  mankind  to-day.  It  is  not  primarily 
a  question  of  money,  or  position,  or  work,  or 
leisure;  it  is  fundamentally  a  question  of  life. 
In  one  class  life  is  rich  and  full ;  in  another  it  is 
destitute,  afflicted,  tormented.  This  is  the  con- 
dition that  everywhere  arrests  the  eye  of  the 
beholder,  the  condition  that  is  producing  the  agi- 
tations and  social  earthquakes  of  our  century. 

Now  Christianity  meets  this  defect  of  life  with 
the  gospel  of  life.  Christianity  is  the  coming  of 
the  Divine  Life  as  revelation,  as  power,  as  the 
form  of  the  Infinite  Love.  The  first  great  need 
is  light,  revelation  of  the  Divine  plan  of  society. 

^  Socialism,  Dr.  Hitchcock,  p.  7. 


BROTHERHOOD  AND  SONSHIP.  217 

Througli  the  career  of  Christ,  the  true  order  for 
raan  is  made  to  appear.  Masterhood  and  ser- 
vanthood  are  not  abolished;  inequalities  of  en- 
dowment and  acquired  capacity  remain;  fitness 
for  the  various  functions  of  society  continue  as 
diverse  as  ever;  the  human  world  still  resembles 
the  natural  in  its  elevations  and  depressions. 
But  there  is  discovered  a  new  relationship)  in 
humanity.  It  is  the  great  commonplace  of  bro- 
therhood supreme  over  all  inequalities  and  diver- 
sities, and  working  out  through  them  a  richer 
and  vaster  life  for  the  social  whole.  This  com- 
munity of  brothers,  some  of  whom  have  five  tal- 
ents and  some  but  one,  and  all  of  whom  are 
under  the  sternest  obligation  to  improve  and 
increase  what  has  been  committed  to  them,  stands 
under  the  fatherly  government  of  God.  Human 
lives  rise  into  heaven,  they  appear  before  God, 
they  are  under  his  Fatherhood,  the  subjects  of 
his  discipline  and  compassionating,  redeeming 
love ;  and  they  are  interrelated  one  with  another, 
each  with  all  and  all  with  each,  as  are  the  trees 
in  a  great  forest  through  the  intergrowth  of  roots 
and  the  interlocking  of  branches.  Under  the 
industrial  order  is  the  moral  order  of  human 
life;  under  the  questions  of  trade  are  the  ques- 
tions of  humanity;  beneath  the  forms  of  the 
business  world  lie  the  immutable  facts  of  human 
brotherhood  and  the  Divine  Paternity. 

This  is  the  first  step  to  be  taken  in  answer  to 


218  A  SUPREME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

the  social  need  of  the  time.  The  primary  ques- 
tion is  one  of  light,  of  revelation.  What  is  the 
true  order  for  human  beings,'  and  how  are  they 
'delated  one  to  another  according  to  the  ultimate 
facts  and  forces  of  the  case?  Man  is  defined 
both  by  the  Christless  capitalist  and  the  wild 
socialist  in  terms  of  industry.  The  thought  of 
both  moves  wholly  in  the  materialistic  sphere. 
There  is  so  much  wealth,  that  is,  articles  which 
are  useful  and  which  possess  exchangeable  value, 
produced  every  year,  and  the  problem  is  simply 
one  of  distribution.  The  whole  fight  is  carried 
on  in  the  realm  of  the  material,  and  for  the  exe- 
cution of  its  j)urpose  it  must  look  to  force.  And 
not  infrequently  the  combatants  change  sides. 
The  insolvent  capitalist  becomes  the  crazed  social- 
ist; the  successful  laborer  leaves  the  ranks  of 
socialism,  and  is  transformed  into  a  tremendous 
individualist.  The  battle  is,  as  has  been  well 
said,  between  the  Haves  and  the  Have  Nots. 
Those  who  have,  want  the  present  order  to  go 
on;  those  who  have  not,  would  like  a  change. 
Meanwhile  failure  of  one  of  the  haves  turns  him 
over  to  the  side  of  the  revolutionists ;  and  success 
of  one  of  the  have  nots,  puts  a  stop  to  his  wild 
speech,  and  carries  him  quietly  over  to  the  con- 
servatives. The  truth  of  the  whole  matter  ap- 
pears very  clearly  in  the  answer  of  the  Scottish 
Highlander  to  the  question  of  his  former  party 
leader.     Said  the  agitator,   "You  used  to  be  a 


CHBISTIANITY  AS  SOCIAL  OBDER.        219 

tremendous  radical,  and  now  you  are  an  immov- 
able conservative:  will  you  be  good  enough  to 
give  the  reason  for  this  revolution  in  your  opin- 
ion?" The  reply  was,  "Nothing  is  easier;  I 
have  now  a  croft  and  a  coo." 

While  the  problem  is  thus  understood,  pro- 
gress toward  the  settlement  of  social  difficulties 
is  impossible.  It  is  here  that  Christianity  comes 
to  the  rescue.  It  converts  the  industrial  question 
into  the  moral  question,  the  problem  of  trade  into 
the  problem  of  humanity.  It  refuses  to  regard 
men  as  simply  creatures  of  the  seen  and  temporal, 
mere  animals  with  a  capacity  for  business,  and 
whose  social  arrangements  are  necessarily  made 
with  an  eye  to  the  selfish  advantage  of  one  class 
over  another.  It  persists  in  regarding  them  as 
brothers  in  a  grand  community  of  duties  and 
privileges,  and  under  the  providence  and  moral 
discipline  of  a  common  Eternal  Father.  It 
preaches  the  reality  of  the  kingdom  of  God  as 
giving  the  ultimate  order  for  human  existence. 
Behind  all  institutions  civil  and  ecclesiastical; 
back  of  all  forms  of  trade  whether  competitive  or 
cooperative,  under  the  entire  life  of  mankind,  is 
the  moral  order  that  includes  all  men  in  one 
brotherhood  subject  to  the  Divine  Fatherhood. 
The  questions  of  capital  and  labor,  the  problems 
of  industrial  and  social  forms,  must  be  carried 
out  of  the  lower  courts  of  mere  materialism  where 
they  are  at  present  being  tried,  and  where  deci- 


220  A  SUPBEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

sions  that  are  settlements  never  can  be  had,  to 
the  supreme  tribunal  of  humanity  under  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  Divine  Paternity.  The  appeal 
of  the  workman  must  not  be  to  the  humanity  of 
the  capitalist  while  he  retains  his  own  selfishness ; 
nor  must  the  capitalist  appeal  to  the  humanity 
of  the  workman  while  he  keeps  his  hardness  of 
heart.  Both  must  go  out  of  the  lower  court  into 
the  higher,  from  animalism  to  manhood,  from 
the  bitterness  of  enemies  into  the  mood  of  Chris- 
tian brotherhood.  If  the  social  quarrel  is  that 
of  dogs  over  a  bone,  there  is  absolutely  no  hope 
of  just  settlement ;  the  strongest  dog  will  got  the 
bone  every  time,  and  the  rest  will  have  only  the 
comfort  of  howling.  The  ascension  of  all  parties 
to  the  fight  into  Christian  humanity  is  the  indis- 
pensable preliminary  of  the  moral  adjudication 
of  the  case. 

But  Christianity  not  only  brings  light ;  it  also 
supplies  the  power  of  realization,  and  that  is  per- 
haps the  deepest  need  of  human  nature.  The 
lines  of  the  Greek  poet  tell  the  tale :  — 

"  Oft  have  I  lain  awake  at  nig-ht  and  tlioug-lit 
Wlienee  came  tlie  evils  of  this  mortal  life ; 
And  my  creed  is  that  not  thro'  lack  of  wit 
Men  g-o  astray,  for  most  of  them  have  sense 
Sufficient,  but  that  we  must  look  elsewhere. 
Discourse  of  reason  tells  us  what  is  right, 
But  we  fall  short  in  action."  ^ 

1  Euripides  Hippoljtus,  lines  375-oSl,  Goldwin  Smith's  trans- 
lation. 


IDEAL  AND  ACTUAL.  221 

A  good  creed  does  not  always  carry  witli  it  a 
good  character.  Ideals,  even  where  they  are  gen- 
uine, are  very  different  from  realizations.  Many 
have  the  revelation  of  duty  who  do  not  possess 
the  power  of  obedience.  The  government  of  our 
great  cities  is  admirable  upon  paper,  but  in  fact  it 
is  one  of  the  scandals  of  the  civilized  world.  The 
abstract,  constitutional,  paper  creed  of  New  York, 
Boston,  and  Chicago  is  doubtless  very  good;  the 
fitting  and  faithful  embodiment  of  the  excellent 
symbol  in  municipal  administration  is  another 
matter.  Every  patriotic  American  believes  that 
in  theory  he  lives  under  the  best  government  in 
the  earth ;  but  if  he  is  familiar  with  the  history 
of  politics  and  the  conduct  of  the  public  service, 
he  must  often  feel  how  immeasurably  below  the 
ideal  promise  is  the  actual  fulfillment.  This 
statement  does  not  imply  that  the  discrepancy 
between  personal,  municipal,  and  national  creed 
and  performance  comes  of  insincerity  and  h}"|)oc- 
risy.  The  state  of  things  that  one  now  beholds, 
one  can  imagine  to  exist,  in  less  aggravated 
forms,  without  the  intervention  of  intentional 
widespread  knavery.  The  truth  is,  personal  right- 
eous living  is  a  difficult  task;  the  just  and  piu'e 
administration  of  the  affairs  of  a  great  city  is  a 
perplexing  problem ;  and  the  wise  and  beneficent 
control  of  the  interests  of  a  mighty  nation  is  a 
tremendous  tax  upon  the  resources  of  human 
nature. 


222  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

This  line  of  remark  inclines  one  to  patience 
with  the  present  order  of  society,  whose  working 
results  in  great  inequalities,  in  shocking  forms  of 
injustice,  in  outrageous  inhumanities.     To  man- 
age a  world,  to  control  the  enterprise  of  mankind, 
to  govern  the  industrial   activity  of   the  whole 
earth,   is   a   stupendous  undertaking.     It   is   no 
wonder,   when   one   considers  human  limitation, 
that   incidental   outrages   occur.     The    engineer 
cannot  always  stop  his  train  in  time,  strikes  a 
carriage  crossing  the  track,   and  hurls  to  death 
a  whole  happy  household;   a  captain   is  unable 
always  materially  to  slacken  the  momentum  of 
his  ship  as  it   emerges  from  the  fog-bank  with 
another  crossing  its  bows,  and  so  the  unfortunate 
craft  ahead  is  cut  into  two  and  sunk,   perhaps 
with  all  on  board.     Much  more  must  this  be  the 
case  when  it  is  a  question  of  the  control  of  the 
whole   social  movement.     It  is    so    immense,    is 
under    such   momentum,    and   requires    so  much 
intelligence  and  power  to  handle  it,  that  it  is  no 
wonder  that  the  vast  leviathan  occasionally  runs 
down  whole  fleets  of  interests  and  just  claims  that 
happen  to  cross  its  bows.     It  is  for  the  greatest 
man,  backed  by  the  greatest  people,  a  tremen- 
dous task  to  govern;  and  the  perfected  form  of 
human  society  man  is  at  present  unable  to  frame, 
nor  is  he  equal  to  the  best  use  of  the  imperfect 
form  under  which  he  lives. 

All   this   makes   evident   the   need   of  society 


MORAL  DYNAMICS,  223 

for  the  second  great  message  of  Christianity,  — 
power,  moral  dynamics.     A  perfect  social  scheme 
is  not  self -operating,  and  in  the  management  of 
it,    as  men  now  are,   they  would  make  as   big 
blunders  as  they  do  to-day.     A  circular  saw  is 
an  almost  perfect  instrument  for  turning  trees 
into  timber,  and  yet  it  is  an  instrument  whose 
operation   may   well   inspire    fear.     It   will    go 
through  a  finger  or  a  foot,  an  arm  or  a  leg,  the 
body  or  the  brain,  with  the  same  remorseless  ease 
and  celerity  with  which  it  goes  through  a  log  of 
wood.     Schemes  for  the  righteous  control  of  the 
sum  total  of  human  life  are  one  thing,  the  abso- 
lute management  of  them  is  another.     The  truth 
is,  the  coming  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  only  ade- 
quate hope  and  help  for  man.     The  social  prob- 
lem is  but  the  personal  and  domestic  magnified 
and  more  complex.     The  power  that  reaches  and 
renews    the    heart    is    the    grace  of   the  Infinite 
through  Jesus  Christ.     There  is  such  a  thing  as 
the  leadership  of  God,^  and  that  is  given  through 
the  person  and  career  of  Christ.     The  personal- 
ity of  Christ  is  the  form  for  the  coming  of  the 
moral  power  of  the  Infinite;  and  it  is  this  power 
that    men    need  for  personal  conduct,    domestic 
peace,  national  righteousness,  and  victorious  hu- 
manity. 

1  The  important  bearing  of  leadership  upon  the  social  problem 
was  admirably  discussed  by  Dr.  E.  Winchester  Donald  in  his 
lectures  before  the  Lowell  Institute  for  1895. 


224  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

Here  again,  and  in  connection  witli  the  sorest 
troubles  and  deepest  interests  of  the  race,  the 
supreme  divinity  of  Jesus  discloses  its  signifi- 
cance. There  are  these  maddening  contrasts  of 
life  in  the  heart  of  society.  They  are  reflected 
upon  and  discussed  popularly,  only  as  effects  of 
an  industrial  order;  they  are  not  traced  to  their 
source  in  man's  inhumanity  to  man.  Christianity 
meets  the  social  difficulty  at  this  point.  It  brings 
a  revelation  of  the  true  order  for  human  beings, 
and  through  the  Person  of  the  Revealer  it  intro- 
duces the  moral  power  of  the  Infinite.  Now  in 
this  connection  the  deity  of  Christ  is  the  assur- 
ance that  the  order  which  he  proposes  for  man  is 
the  order  which  God  proposes  and  in  which  he 
lives.  Christ  gives  his  concej)tion  of  the  king- 
dom, his  thought  of  mankind,  standing  in  a  com- 
munity of  brotherhood  under  the  Divine  Father- 
hood; and  the  conception,  the  thought,  through 
his  leadership,  has  had  and  still  possesses  elemen- 
tal power.  It  is  indeed  the  new  creating  force  in 
human  society.  Its  power  is  conditioned  upon 
belief,  upon  the  open  heart  and  the  ready  spirit; 
and  that  power  will  become  immeasurably  greater 
if  men  should  be  able  to  hold  that  the  scheme 
and  influence  of  Jesus  have  the  universe  on  their 
side.  The  ideals  of  socialism  are  often  not  far 
from  the  truth;  they  are  frequently  but  crude 
versions  of  Christ's  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  love. 
The  question  comes,  Where  are  human  beings  to 


GOB  FOB  HUMANITY.  225 

look  for  tlie  power  to  realize  tliese  ideals  ?  Mr. 
Kidd  writes  eloquently  of  the  stock  of  altruistic 
feeling  with  wliick  the  race  was  endowed  some 
two  thousand  years  ago,  and  which  is  still  unspent. 
What  one  wants  to  know  is,  Who  thus  stocked 
our  Western  civilization?  Is  Christ's  scheme  a 
chimera,  or  the  true  and  ultimate  interpretation 
of  human  life  ?  and  is  the  Infinite,  in  whom  lies 
the  whole  menace  or  hope  of  man's  existence,  for 
or  against  the  Christian  programme?  The  old 
faith  in  the  deity  of  Christ  is  of  the  utmost  sig- 
nificance for  the  purified  ideal  of  socialism. 
That  sublime  belief  beholds  in  the  Godhead  the 
ground  of  hmnan  society,  its  plan,  its  creative 
source;  and  the  dynamics  of  the  Eternal  Life 
that  will  at  last  make  the  heavenly  communion 
of  Father  and  Son  and  Holy  Spirit  actual  in 
the  earthly  brotherhood.  The  city  of  God  must 
descend  out  of  heaven.  The  socialistic  ideal  is 
doomed  if  it  has  the  universe  against  it.  Ethics 
that  mean  nothing  beyond  time  and  space,  pro- 
posals for  human  improvement  that  are  vetoed 
by  the  Absolute,  decrees  for  man's  amelioration 
that  collide  with  the  decree  of  the  Eternal,  can 
have  but  one  issue.  The  Christian  thinker  of  to- 
day surveys  with  the  socialist  the  outrages  that 
result  from  the  operation  of  the  present  form  of 
social  arrangements.  He  looks  with  the  deepest 
sympathy  upon  the  whole  sad  condition  of  the 
vast  majority  of  mankind.     He  believes  in  the 


226  A  SUPBEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

advent  of  a  new  earth  wherein  righteousness  is 
to  dwell,  and  for  the  coming  of  this  kingdom  of 
love  he  counts  it  a  privilege  to  labor  and  live. 
But  the  magnitude  of  the  task,  and  the  difficul- 
ties besetting  it,  would  overwhelm  him  in  despair 
if  he  did  not  possess  Luther's  faith. 

"  Did  we  in  our  own  strength  confide, 
Our  striving  would  be  losing, 
Were  not  the  right  man  on  our  side, 
The  man  of  God's  own  chosing. 
Dost  ask  who  that  may  be  ? 
Christ  Jesus,  it  is  he  : 
Lord  Sabbaoth  is  his  name. 
From  age  to  age  the  same. 
And  he  must  win  the  battle." 

The  hope  of  the  reconstruction  of  human  society, 
apart  from  the  support  of  the  Infinite  Life,  is  the 
emptiest  dream.  Out  into  this  Infinite,  up  into 
the  aboriginal  eternal  fellowship  in  the  Godhead, 
the  belief  in  the  deity  of  Christ  leads.  It  be- 
holds in  the  Godhead  the  plan  for  human  society ; 
it  links  the  human  world  to  the  divine  by  a  cord 
that  cannot  be  broken ;  and  it  supports  the  grand 
historic  movement  upon  the  ever  -  brightening 
social  ideal  with  the  sympathy,  the  decree,  the 
nature  of  the  Absolute. 

IV. 

The  force  of  the  grand  historic  concej)tion  of 
the  Person  of  Christ,  as  a  weapon  against  mate- 
rialism, must  not  be  passed  over  in  absolute  silence. 


THOMAS  HILL  GBEEN.  227 

Materialism  as  a  theory  of  the  universe  is  to  be 
met,  of  course,  upon  its  own  ground.  What  pro- 
fesses to  live  by  logic  must  die  by  logic,  if  it  is 
to  die  at  all.  Whatever  comes  in  the  name  of 
reason  must  receive  its  warrant  of  life  or  death 
from  reason  alone.  A  philosophy  that  grounds 
man's  existence  upon  a  supposed  external  physi- 
cal or  non-mental  order  must  be  challenged  and 
vanquished  by  a  philosophy  that  founds  human 
life  upon  the  Infinite  Spirit.  And  this  has  been 
done  to  a  demonstration,  in  the  judgment  of  the 
vast  majority  of  competent  students,  by  the  ideal- 
istic philosophy  of  Germany,  as  that  has  been 
expounded  and  critically  applied  by  British  think- 
ers of  the  last  quarter  of  a  century.  The  great 
and  abiding  service  that  Thomas  Hill  Green  per- 
formed for  English  thought  consists  in  his  final 
showing  that,  if  Humism  is  to  be  the  dominant 
philosophy,  nihilism  must  be  the  result.  For 
society  and  ethics  and  science  and  knowledge 
itself  there  is  absolutely  no  basis  in  that  system 
of  thorouo'h-s^oino^  individualism.  Never  before 
in  the  history  of  speculation  in  Great  Britain  has 
a  similar  final  piece  of  critical  work  been  done. 
Others  have  cooperated  with  Green  at  the  com- 
mon task  of  leading  the  British  mind  to  com- 
prehend the  j^hilosophy  on  which  it  was  building 
the  interests  of  the  nation  and  mankind,  but  for 
thoroughness  and  demonstrative  force  his  achieve- 
ment    is    monumental.     The    popular    scientific 


228  A  SUPREME  CHEISTOLOGY. 

writers  who  are  proud  to  trace  their  speculative 
descent  from  Hume,  and  who  have  stood  in  pub- 
lic estimation  as  the  advocates  of  materialism,  or, 
what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  who  have  traced 
human  life  to  a  non-rational  origin,  have  prac- 
ticed upon  themselves  and  upon  the  multitudes  of 
their  readers  a  lamentable  imposture.  They  have 
been  the  most  talkative  gentlemen  of  their  time, 
when,  according  to  the  fundamental  principle  of 
their  philosophy,  they  should  have  been  dumb. 
To  the  coming  generation  of  thinkers  there  will 
be  something  pathetic  in  the  career  of  a  man  like 
Mr.  Huxley.  He  and  those  who  have  labored 
with  him  for  the  diffusion  of  knowledge  will  pass 
into  history,  as  the  unconscious  children  of  a  phi- 
losophical tradition,  —  as  men  who  took  their  spec- 
ulative beliefs  from  Hume,  as  good  Catholics  do 
from  the  church,  without  once  suspecting  that 
the  beliefs,  if  true,  made  science  itself  impossi- 
ble, without  dreaming  that  the  issue  of  their  mas- 
ter's principles  was  absolute  nihilism.  For  their 
accomplishments  as  students  of  physical  science, 
for  their  zeal  in  sharing  the  brilliant  results  of 
their  investigations  with  the  public,  and  for  their 
power  as  masters  of  the  English  tongue,  these 
men  deserve  great  respect.  But  as  philosophic 
thinkers  they  have  been,  as  I  have  already  said, 
both  for  themselves  and  their  followers,  a  lament- 
able imposture.  Their  trivimph  in  this  depart- 
ment has  been  largely  owing  to  the  general  igno- 


APOSTLES  OF  IDEALISM.  229 

ranee  upon  the  ultimate  problems  of  thought; 
and  they  remind  one  of  the  dying  Welsh  clergy- 
man who  impressed  his  illiterate  English  attend- 
ants with  his  command  of  Hebrew  and  Greek 
by  interjecting  in  his  talk  with  them  sentences 
from  his  mother  tongue,  which  the  poor  man  him- 
self confounded  with  the  original  languages  of 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  It  is  matter  for 
deep  regret  that  the  philosophic  answer  to  Hum- 
ism,  and  to  every  system  that  derives  human 
knowledge  and  life  from  a  non-rational  source, 
should  exist  in  a  form  only  intelligible  to  schol- 
ars. We  need  apostles  of  idealism  who  shall  be 
able  to  conceive  their  gospel  in  a  vivid  and  vital 
manner,  who  shall  have  the  gift  of  sympathy 
with  the  intellectual  needs  of  the  masses  of  intel- 
ligent people,  and  who,  by  the  superb  and  attrac- 
tive forms  in  which  they  are  able  to  invest  their 
philosophic  faith,  shall  lift  it  into  popular  sover- 
eignty. What  is  already  dead  for  the  insight  of 
the  thinker  should  not  be  allowed  to  continue  its 
imposition  upon  the  multitude.^  I  am  far  from 
believing  that  idealism  in  its  present  shape  is  the 
final  philosophic  gospel ;  but  I  cannot  help  think- 

1  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour's  book,  The  Foundations  of  Belief,  con- 
tains a  brilliant  application  to  Naturalism  of  the  negative  side 
of  Idealism.  The  author  seems  to  forget,  when  he  comes  to 
treat  of  Idealism,  that  for  his  triumph  over  Naturalism  he  is 
indebted  to  that  school  of  thought.  His  criticism  of  Idealism 
is  brilliant  and  suggestive,  but  hardly  goes  to  the  root  of  the 
matter. 


230  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

ing  that,  if  its  profound  and  vital  thoughts  were 
made  a  living  part  of  the  national  consciousness, 
there  would  be  a  revival  of  righteousness,  ethical 
passion,  and  hope,  such  as  this  country  has  never 
witnessed.  For  the  philosophic  student  of  our 
time,  these  thoughts  are  among  the 

"  Truths  that  wake 
To  perish  fiever ;  " 

and  the  call  is  for  a  whole  army  of  apostles  to 
hold  forth  these  words  of  life,  and  vindicate  for 
the  multitude  the  consciousness  that  existence  has 
•a  noble  and  an  unfathomable  significance. 

However,  as  a  practical  argument,  nothing  is 
so  bewildering  and  ultimately  overwhelming  to 
materialistic  opposition  as  the  idea  of  the  Incar- 
nation as  realized  in  Jesus  Christ.  Even  on  the 
lowest  possible  ground,  —  on  the  basis  of  belief  in 
Jesus  as  nothing  more  than  the  wisest  and  best 
man  that  ever  lived,  —  the  conception  which  his 
career  embodied  possesses  an  incalculable  power. 
Admitting  him  to  be  nothing  more  than  the  tran- 
scendent man  that  all  competent  unbelievers  are 
forward  to  confess  him  to  have  been,  still  his  life 
is  the  sovereign  practical  argument  against  that 
degradation  of  the  worth  of  human  existence  in- 
volved in  materialism.  For  the  question  comes. 
What  did  this  wisest  and  best  man  do  with  his 
life?  Did  he  spend  it  in  bewailing  the  lot  of 
humanity?  Did  he  fill  the  days,  and  after  him 
the  centuries,  with  mere  melodious  sorrow  ove;r 


CHRIST S  ATTITUDE  TOWARD  LIFE.      231 

the  brevity,  tlie  emptiness,  tlie  tragedy  of  human 
existence  ?  Did  he  exhibit  his  scorn  for  the  igno- 
rant masses  by  holding  aloof  from  them  ?  Did  he 
regard  them  as  dumb  driven  cattle,  and  was  this 
verdict  pronounced  by  his  teaching  and  endeavor  ? 
If,  indeed,  this  wisest  and  best  man  had  summed 
up  his  judgment  of  human  life  in  terms  of  min- 
gled pity  and  contempt,  in  words  that  reveal 
what  a  poor  thing  he  held  it  to  be,  in  expressions 
which  showed  his  deliberate  opinion  to  have  been 
that  it  was  a  hopeless  evil,  —  a  mistake  to  be 
born,  a  boon  to  die,  —  optimists  would  find  it 
impossible  to  make  headway  against  an  obstacle 
so  stupendous.  But  there  must  be  a  return  to 
the  question.  What  did  this  supreme  man  do 
with  his  life?  He  went  about  doing  good.  He 
spent  it  in  the  service  of  the  criminal,  the  vicious, 
the  outcast,  the  vast  weltering  masses  of  aban- 
doned humanity.  He  took  his  life,  with  its  super- 
lative wisdom  and  goodness  from  his  baj)tism  to 
his  crucifixion,  and  gave  it  in  one  continuous 
sacrifice  in  attestation  of  his  sense  of  the  worth 
of  the  human  soul.  The  life  of  Jesus  was  equally 
his  offering  to  the  Infinite  and  his  tribute  to  the 
dignity  of  man.  Even  on  this  lowest  level,  on 
the  simple  recognition  of  him  as  the  wisest  and 
best  of  mankind,  the  force  of  his  judgment  for 
the  worth  of  the  hmnan  spirit,  uttered  through  a 
career  of  unparalleled  devotion,  is  sufficient  to 


232  A  SUPBEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

paralyze  the  strongest  forms  of  materialistic  be- 
lief.    In  hours  of  depression,  therefore,  when 

"  Our  light  is  low 
When  the  blood  creeps  and  the  nerves  prick 
And  tingle,  and  the  heart  is  sick, 
And  all  the  wheels  of  being  slow," 

when  the  confidence  of  reason  is  for  the  moment 
shaken,  and  the  whole  scheme  of  thought  that  is 
the  support  of  Christian  faith  seems  but  transfig- 
ured mist,  the  fond  creation  of  human  longing  and 
love  and  the  order  of  the  universe  looks  hollow, 
godless,  brutal,  reduce  Christ  to  the  lowest  terms 
possible,  take  him  simply  as  the  superlative  man, 
and  ask  what  he  did  with  his  life.  The  material- 
istic notion  that  makes  human  life  worthless 
makes  the  career  of  Christ  folly,  his  exertion  in 
behalf  of  ignorance  and  helplessness  fanaticism, 
his  cross  mournful,  unmitigated,  eternal  waste. 
If  human  existence  is  meanmgless,  the  career  of 
our  best  man  is  lunacy.  If  we  curse  humanity 
we  crucify  the  Lord  afresh,  and  put  him  to  an 
open  shame.  Pessimism  is  impossible  in  the 
presence  of  Christ. 

But  assume  that  the  consciousness  of  Christ 
represents  the  consciousness  of  God,  and  we  rise 
to  the  true  level.  Here  is  the  human  race  toiling 
up  the  long  ascent  from  brutehood,  living  through 
the  unrecorded  ages  a  life  of  inconceivable  strug- 
gle; it  emerges  into  history,  and  becomes  able 
to  record  its  sufferings  because  they  have  been 


CHRIST  AND  EVOLUTION.  233 

reduced  to  manageable  compass.  Next  come  the 
vast  empires  of  force,  and  under  them  tlie  con- 
viction is  born  that  existence  is  vain.  At  a 
given  point  of  time,  not  without  the  noblest  prep- 
arations, not  only  in  one  race  but  in  all  associated 
races.  One  appears  who  represents  the  mind  of 
the  Eternal.  The  whole  scene  is  changed.  Suf- 
fering then  becomes  the  revealer  of  the  path  of 
life,  and  the  impulse  to  walk  therein ;  the  unre- 
corded ages  of  labor  and  sorrow  are  converted 
into  a  sublime  ascent  of  mankind  in  response  to 
the  Divine  election;  the  long  and  tragic  drama 
of  history  takes  the  form  of  an  evolution  of  the 
purpose  of  God  in  the  education  of  humanity. 
The  advent  of  Christ  as  the  accredited  represent- 
ative of  the  Infinite  thus  makes  unmistakable 
the  august  significance  of  life.  The  movement 
of  mankind  remains  wild  and  terrible,  but  a  pur- 
pose is  seen  subduing  it.  The  path  of  progress 
is  still  an  agony  and  a  bloody  sweat,  but  there  is 
no  waste;  every  ounce  of  pain,  every  hour  of 
darkness,  is  made  to  contribute  to  the  mighty 
advance,  serves  to  bring  out  the  glory  of  the 
receding  goal,  and  is  converted  into  richer  and 
vaster  being  on  the  way.  The  Christian  concep- 
tion of  the  Incarnation,  clearly  understood,  con- 
stantly entertained,  and  allowed  free  play  over 
imagination  and  feeling,  will  utterly  annihilate  all 
opposing  forms  of  thought,  and  create  an  optim- 
ism that  nothing  can  exhaust.     No  philosophy  at 


234  A  SUPREME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

war  with  human  interests  can  as  much  as  gain 
a  foothold  in  a  mind  and  a  community  under  the 
ascendency  of  the  consciousness  of  Christ  as  the 
consciousness  of  God.  To  such  a  mind  and  com- 
munity, such  a  j)l^ilc)sophy  becomes  incredible 
and  inconceivable.  This  is  part  of  the  meaning 
of  the  profound  apostolic  resolve  to  preach  Christ. 
It  is  to  employ,  in  behalf  of  the  world  that  works 
and  suffers,  that  has  no  tune  and  no  talent  for 
abstract  thinking,  an  engine  of  power  that  will 
never  allow  even  an  invasion  of  the  great  and 
beautiful  expanses  of  faith. 

V. 

Upon  Christ  the  human  race  must  ever  be 
dependent.  In  the  last  analysis,  the  reason  of 
this  is  that  Christ  is  not  something  external  to 
humanity,  but  first  the  true  Incarnation  of  its 
eternal  j)rototype  in  the  Godhead,  and  second 
the  very  divinity  with  which  its  sj)irit  is  consub- 
stantiated.  The  coming  of  Christ  means  the 
awakening  of  humanity  to  its  ideal  and  divine 
side ;  and  his  departure  would  signify  the  aban- 
donment by  the  race  of  sonship  to  the  Father  in 
heaven.  The  rejection  of  Christ  is  the  expulsion 
of  the  divine  from  human  thought  and  concern, 
the  disowning  of  all  the  ties  that  bind  this  earthly 
existence  to  the  Infinite,  the  degradation  of  life 
to  the  animal  level,  and  the  rigid  confinement  of 
all  its  activities  and  interests  within  the  godless 


THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL.  235 

and  soulless  categories  o£  sense  and  time.  Hu- 
manity thus  stands  or  falls  witli  the  acceptance 
or  rejection  of  its  King.  The  Christ,  universally 
disowned  by  life  as  well  as  by  thought,  would  be 
a  hxunanity  dead;  while  the  Christ  universally 
received  would  be  humanity  lifted  to  the  summit 
of  its  privilege,  and  in  the  happy  realization  of 
the  end  for  which  it  was  created. 

The  true  relation  of  mankind  to  the  Lord  Jesus 
is  not  grasped  until  he  is  regarded  as  the  Incar- 
nation of  the  Eternal  Huraanity  in  which  the 
race  is  constituted.  The  philosophy  of  the  Pro- 
logue to  the  Fourth  Gospel  is  essential  to  the 
understanding  of  the  advent  and  career  of  Jesus. 
There  is  eternally  in  the  Godhead  a  rational, 
creative  humanity,  and  in  that  divine  humanity 
our  race  is  constituted.  In  the  Eternal  Word, 
who  became  flesh  in  Jesus,  men  live  and  move 
and  have  their  being.  The  Eternal  ideal  human- 
ity and  the  historic  fact  meet  in  the  prophet  of 
Nazareth.  The  Eternal  thus  manifests  himself 
through  the  divinely  human  career,  and,  after  the 
history  is  made  which  forever  renders  impossible 
the  denial  that  the  ideal  is  the  real,  the  Eternal 
returns  to  his  pre-incarnate  fullness  and  univer- 
sality. The  historic  Jesus  is  the  revelation,  the 
attestation,  the  demonstration  of  the  Divine 
Sonship  in  which  men  were  chosen  before  the 
foundation  of  the  world.  That  Divine  Sonship, 
forever  identified  with  the  history  of   the  unique 


236  A  SUPREME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

man,  is  life  and  breath  and  all  things  for  man- 
kind. 

The  personal  conscience  is  the  great  witness  of 
this  high  relationship  in  the  case  of  the  individ- 
ual. The  poor  actual  of  creature  life  and  the 
awful  ideal  of  the  Creator's  character  are  hinted 
at  by  the  conscience  of  the  savage,  are  given  in 
more  and  more  impressive  forms  as  it  rises  in  en- 
lightenment. The  conscience  is  the  true  Jacob's 
ladder  set  in  the  heart  of  the  individual  and 
reaching  unto  heaven;  and  upon  it  the  angels 
of  self-reproach  and  self-approval  ascend  and 
descend.  The  capacity  for  righteousness  is  the 
conscious  possession  of  the  normal  man,  and  the 
discrimination  between  right  and  wrong,  good 
and  evil,  is  but  the  working  within  the  sjDirit  of 
the  Infinite  Christ.  The  power  of  the  historic 
Christ  to  quicken  the  conscience  depends  upon 
the  essential  relation  of  that  organ  of  the  soul  to 
the  Eternal  Christ.  The  consciousness  that  there 
is  an  ethical  meaning  to  man's  choices  and  acts, 
that  his  career  is  the  subject  of  moral  judgment, 
that  the  significance  of  his  thought  and  behavior 
reaches  beyond  time  and  space,  that  his  being  is 
bound  up  with  the  Infinite,  is  the  profoundest 
import  of  conscience,  and  it  is  the  whisper  within 
him  of  the  Word  of  God.  The  modern  con- 
science is  the  creation  of  the  historic  Christ,  but 
this  creation  would  have  been  impossible  had  not 
man  been  constituted  in  the  Eternal  Christ. 


THE  LOVER  AND  THE  IDEAL.  237 

The  public  conscience,  as  it  stands  expressed 
in  the  institutions  and  lasting  literatures  of  the 
world,  is  the  irresistible  social  witness  to  the 
fact  that  humanity  is  organized  in  the  Lord  the 
Spirit.  The  ideals  in  the  veneration  of  which 
the  normal  young  man  and  woman  contemplate 
marriage  and  enter  into  that  state ;  the  feeling  of 
the  mother  for  her  firstborn,  and  the  true  father 
for  his  home;  the  final  cause  of  all  education; 
the  supreme  purpose  of  government;  the  insight 
and  love  and  faith  of  mankind  as  enshrined  in 
literature ;  and  the  institutions  that  represent  the 
aspirations  of  the  spirit,  —  all  mean  nothing  un- 
less we  assume  that  the  race  is  in  perpetual  con- 
stitutional converse  with  the  Eternal  Humanity. 
Mephistopheles  calls  the  lover  "a  sentimental 
sensualist,"  and,  if  one  shall  adopt  his  spirit  of 
denial,  one  must  subscribe  to  his  conclusion.  If 
love  is  but  a  physical  passion,  its  ideal  is  but 
the  glow  of  its  lurid  fires  upon  the  clouds  of 
imagination.  If  the  physiological  movement  is 
the  only  reality,  the  lover  can  never  be  other 
than  "a  sentimental  sensualist."  But  if  the  stir 
in  the  physical  nature  is  but  the  occasion  of  the 
emergence  of  the  ideal,  the  storm  which  it  is  to 
calm,  the  chaos  which  it  is  to  subdtie  into  order 
and  beauty,  the  material  forces  through  which  it 
is  to  find  consummate  human  utterance,  then  the 
lover  is  one  who  is  looking  upon  the  face  of  the 
Eternal   Humanity.     Purity   and  sensuality  are 


238  A  SUPBEME  CHRISTOLOGY. 

here  seen  in  their  infinite  contrast.  Purity  is 
the  lover  following  his  ideal  into  the  humanity 
of  God,  convinced  that  it  is  the  everlasting  real- 
ity, and  returning  with  it  to  govern  the  divine 
days  of  engagement  and  the  diviner  years  of 
wedded  life.  Sensuality  is  contempt  of  the  ideal, 
the  degradation  of  it  to  the  mere  romantic  effect 
of  physical  passion  upon  the  imagination,  the 
denial  that  home  and  its  sanctities  are  amenable 
to  the  Infinite  Holiness.  The  sensualist,  whether 
refined  or  foul,  is  the  worst  enemy  of  mankind. 
He  is  the  fiendish  unbeliever,  the  denier  of  the 
divine  significance  of  human  existence,  the  apostle 
of  atheism,  egoism,  and  filth.  The  normal  lover, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  the  herald  of  the  ideal,  the 
revealer  of  the  heavenly  side  of  man's  nature, 
the  witness  of  the  Infinite  Christ;  and,  so  long  as 
the  lover  does  not  fail  from  among  men,  so  long 
will  the  belief  prevail  that  the  race  is  created  in 
the  Son  of  God. 

There  are  two  alternatives  before  the  parent  as 
he  looks  with  indescribable  tenderness  and  fond- 
ness upon  his  children.  He  may  attribute  his 
parental  passion  either  to  blindness  or  to  insight. 
He  knows  that  the  world  does  not  regard  his 
children  as  he  does.  He  woidd  be  ashamed  to 
tell  even  his  friends  how  much  he  thinks  of  them. 
He  is  sure  that  the  most  symj)athetic  among  them 
would  fail  to  enter  into  his  mood.  Now,  one  of 
two  things  must  be  true,  —  either  the  cold,  un- 


RESULT  OF  INSIGHT.  239 

sympathetic  world  is  riglit  about  this  man's  chil- 
dren, or  the  world  is  wrong  and  the  father  is 
right.  Is  parental  fondness  the  result  of  insight 
or  blindness,  the  outcome  of  the  deeper  apprecia- 
tion of  human  life,  or  the  effect  of  its  silly  ideal- 
ization? The  normal  person  will  at  once  admit 
that  parenthood  means  insight,  and  that  admis- 
sion carries  the  significance  of  child-life,  and  in- 
deed all  life,  to  the  Divine  thought.  The  mood 
of  true  parenthood  is  but  the  working  in  an 
earthly  home  of  Christ's  vision  and  passion  for 
humanity.  If  the  parental  insight  and  feeling 
are  true,  they  have  the  universe  on  their  side; 
they  are  lifted  into  the  thought  and  sympathy  of 
the  Infinite;  they  are  a  witness  that  the  home, 
under  another  aspect,  is  ordered  in  the  strength 
of  the  Lord.  The  same  is  true  of  men  in  the 
relations  of  trade  and  citizenship  and  humanity. 
There  is  an  ideal  guiding  the  wise  in  all  these 
orders  of  existence,  and  it  guides  evermore  to  the 
cradle  of  Christ.  So  long  as  men  cry  out  for 
justice  and  sympathy  in  trade,  for  wisdom  and 
righteousness  in  government,  and  for  brother- 
hood in  humanity,  so  long  will  there  be  the  pres- 
ent day  revelation  that  human  society  is  in  con- 
verse with  the  Eternal,  that  it  is  organized  in  the 
Lord  the  Spirit.  As  for  literature,  it  is  man's 
homage  to  the  ideal  enshrined  in  forms  of  imper- 
ishable beauty;  it  is  but  another  name  for  his 
faith  in  the  fathomless  significance  of  life,  and 


240  A   SUPBEME  CHBISTOLOGY. 

the  conviction  that  the  source  of  its  greatness 
lies  in  everlasting  dependence  upon  the  Divine. 
Moral  idealism  is  the  most  persistent  fact  in  the 
history  of  man,  and  it  must  be  one  of  two  things, 
—  the  proof  that  the  race  is  under  a  standing 
delusion,  or  that  it  is  living  in  the  Eternal  Hu- 
manity of  God,  that  Humanity  which  became 
Incarnate  in  Jesus  Christ. 

This  mystic  union  of  the  Lord  and  the  race, 
which  has  everything  on  its  side,  if  there  be  a 
spiritual  world  at  all,  and  a  God  answering  to 
the  necessities  of  the  case,  is  a  familiar  thought 
in  the  New  Testament.  There  is  the  Master's 
beautiful  image  of  the  vine  and  the  branches. 
The  consciousness  of  a  common  life,  of  a  life 
prophetic  of  an  end,  of  a  life  in  the  realization  of 
its  end,  —  that  is  the  fact  humanized.  Out  of 
the  vine  comes  the  stream  of  vitality;  it  goes  on 
increasing  in  the  branches,  disclosing  its  purpose 
more  and  more  clearly;  it  comes  at  last  to  the 
ripened  fruit.  The  consciousness  of  a  divine  life 
issuing  from  the  Christ  with  whom  men  are 
united,  the  prophetic  increase  of  this  conscious- 
ness, and  its  movement  upon  a  glorious  ethical 
end,  —  this  the  thought  of  the  mystic  dependence 
of  man  upon  the  Master  as  expressed  in  his  own 
teaching.  Paul's  image  is  that  of  the  human 
body.  Of  that  body  Christ  is  the  head.  The 
apostle's  figure  does  not  cover,  and  it  was  not 
meant  to  cover,  the  total  relation  of  mankind  to 


THE  KEYSTONE  IN  THE  ABCH.  241 

the  Lord;  but  it  does  exhibit  impressively  the 
organic  union,  the  inseparableness  of  living  hu- 
manity from  the  living  Christ.  Until  one  sees 
this  essential  dependence  of  the  race  upon  its 
Divine  Head,  the  full  meaning  of  the  Incarna- 
tion cannot  be  grasped.  Christ  is  the  keystone 
in  the  arch  of  humanity.  Without  him  it  is 
incomplete,  and  cannot  for  any  length  of  time 
bear  the  burden  of  its  own  weight,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  service  to  which,  in  the  courses  of  his- 
tory, the  Master  Builder  may  turn  it.  But  in 
Christ  the  race  becomes  conscious  of  its  power; 
its  inherent  strength  passes  from  member  to 
member ;  and  the  more  it  is  pressed  by  the  weight 
of  life,  the  closer  it  is  joined  in  common  duty,  the 
compacter  it  becomes  in  lofty  fellowship,  and 
the  grander  the  development  of  its  utilities  for 
the  purposes  of  God. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

CHRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 


"  Tj/xe'is  Sf  KTjpvffcro/JLev  XpiCTThv  iaravpufieuoy,  'lovdaiois  fJLCV  (XKoiv- 
daKov  eOj/effiv  5e  fxwplav,  avrots  he  rois  kXtitoTs,  'lovSalois  re  Koi 
"EWrjaiVt  Xpiarhp  deov  Zvpafxiv  koX  O^ov  aocplav"  —  1  Corinthians 
i.  23,  24. 

"  But  about  the  life  and  sayings  of  Jesus  there  is  a  stamp  of 
personal  originality  combined  with  profundity  of  insight  which 
.  .  .  must  place  the  Prophet  of  Nazareth,  even  in  the  estimation 
of  those  who  have  no  belief  in  his  inspiration,  in  the  very  first 
rank  of  the  men  of  sublime  genius  of  whom  our  species  can 
boast.  When  this  preeminent  genius  is  combined  with  the 
qualities  of  probably  the  greatest  moral  reformer,  and  martyr 
to  that  mission,  who  ever  existed  upon  earth,  religion  cannot  be 
said  to  have  made  a  bad  choice  in  pitchmg  on  this  man  as  the 
ideal  representative  and  guide  of  humanity."  —  John  Stuart 
Mill,  Essays  on  Religion,  pp,  254,  255. 

"  For  it  is  plain  that  if  Christ  be  dead,  he  could  not  be  expel- 
ling demons  and  spoiling  idols.' ' —  Athanasius,  The  Incarnation, 
chap,  xxxii.  4. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

CHRIST   IN   THE   PULPIT   OF   TO-DAY. 

That  which  in  the  second  chapter  was  a  Chris- 
tological  interpretation,  and  which  in  the  third 
chapter  became  a  theological  principle  both  crea- 
tive and  conservative,  now  becomes  the  supreme 
homiletical  method  and  power.  As  in  Mendels- 
sohn's "Hymn  of  Praise"  there  is  first  the  fact 
of  the  victory  of  light  over  darkness  at  the  crea- 
tion, then  the  prophetic  significance  of  this  single 
triumph,  and  lastly  the  wonderful  artistic  achieve- 
ment, so  in  this  discussion  the  Divine  Christ 
becomes  the  prophetic  Christ,  and  both  are  con- 
summated in  the  Christ  of  power.  An  historical 
character  truly  interpreted  yields  a  working  phi- 
losophy of  the  universe,  and  that  becomes  a  mes- 
sage for  the  preacher,  and  upon  his  lips  presses 
for  triumphant  utterance  in  the  life  of  mankind. 
Thus  the  modern  pulpit  has  a  large  task  on  its 
hands,  —  a  task  that  must  mean  for  all  genuine 
preachers  a  magnificent  opportunity.  Still  the 
very  greatness  of  the  opportunity  must  create  a 
certain  noble  solicitude,  must  tend  to  press  the 
preacher  back  upon  the  Infinite  insj)irations.     It 


246      CHEIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

was  the  habit  of  Jesus,  in  the  midst  of  his  work 
and  face  to  face  with  his  opportunity,  ever  recip- 
ient although  he  was  of  his  Father's  help,  peri- 
odically to  retreat  upon  the  life  of  God.  It  was 
a  custom  with  him,  after  caring  from  morning 
to  evening  for  the  sick  and  the  ignorant  and  the 
sinful,  to  retire  at  night  into  some  mountain 
apart,  and  there  enter  into  the  heavenly  commun- 
ion and  replenish  himself  out  of  the  bosom  of 
the  Eternal  through  solitary  prayer.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  the  transfiguration  occurred  in 
the  night;  that  it  took  place  after  a  day  of  ex- 
haustino'  labor  in  the  heart  of  boundless  and  be- 
wildering  opportunity ;  that  it  was  while  he  prayed 
that  the  fashion  of  his  countenance  was  changed, 
and  his  raiment  became  whiter  than  the  snows  of 
Hermon,  and  his  head  more  glorious  than  the  sun 
at  noon ;  and  that  perhaps  it  was  but  one  of  many 
similar  expressions  of  the  unlimited  presence  of 
God  in  his  soul,  as  he  retired  from  the  world  and 
threw  his  wearied  humanity  wide  open  in  a  sweet 
and  awful  trust  to  the  Infinite  Spirit.  There  is 
a  divine  philosophy  in  these  sacred  experiences  of 
the  Lord.  The  world  was  a  stupendous  ]3ractical 
problem  to  him,  and  work  meant  a  victorious  cam- 
paign against  ignorance  and  brutality  and  persist- 
ent wrong-doing.  The  call  was  ever  loud  for 
reinforcements.  It  was  thus  the  pressure  upon 
him  of  his  work,  it  was  the  grandeur  and  ardu- 
ousness  of  his  task,  that  constrained  him  thus  to 


THE  BETUEN  TO   CUEIST.  247 

return  to  his  Father.  And  it  is  one  of  the  better 
signs  of  the  times  that  everywhere  in  the  church 
of  to-day  the  representative  and  leading  minds 
are  returning  to  Christ.  Behind  the  critical 
activity  concentrated  upon  the  New  Testament  is 
the  deep-seated  desire  to  move  through  apostolic 
opinion  and  idiosyncrasy,  through  evangelistic 
prepossession  and  habit,  through  every  likely  or 
possible  accidental  accretion,  as  close  as  can  be  to 
the  pure  and  august  word  of  the  Lord.  Those 
who  fail  to  discern  this  longing  as  the  controlling 
force  in  all  the  nobler  New  Testament  scholars 
will  be  sure  to  misunderstand  their  spirit  and 
misjudge  their  work.  Back  of  the  new  school  of 
ecclesiastical  historians  lies  the  same  great  im- 
pulse. Those  who  have  undertaken  the  great 
task  of  historical  analysis,  of  separating  into  its 
different  strands  the  record  of  the  Christian 
church,  who  think  they  are  able  by  the  subtle 
chemistry  of  insight  and  scholarship  to  eliminate 
from  faith  the  alien  heathen  elements,  and  to 
bring  into  conspicuous  singleness  the  creative 
spirit  of  Christ,  are  doing  so,  that  they  and  their 
brethren  may  have  over  them  only  the  authority 
of  the  Master.  The  appreciation  of  their  purpose 
must  beget  patience  with  these  historians  in  what 
seems  destructive  work.  Their  motive  is  nobler 
and  greater  than  their  method,  is  infinitely  richer 
and  wider  than  their  somewhat  provincial  outlook 
upon  the  world  of  thought.     They  are  animated 


248      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

by  nothing  less  than  the  passion  to  come  face  to 
face  with  the  Mind  out  of  which  Christian  civil- 
ization, in  all  its  worthy  phases,  has  grown,  and 
whose  presence  in  human  history  is  the  force 
creative  of  all  progress  and  all  hope.  So,  too, 
those  who  are  interested  in  a  new  theological  habi- 
tation for  faith,  who  seek  emancipation  from  the 
bondage  of  mediaeval  opinion,  who  want  the  mod- 
ern world  of  life  in  all  its  richness  and  compass 
to  be  mastered  by  adequate  ultimate  conceptions 
of  God  and  man,  are  on  a  deep  return  to  Christ. 
The  longing  for  the  true  word  of  Jesus,  the  desire 
to  reach  the  creative  mind  underlying  Christen- 
dom, the  hunger  for  help  in  the  task  of  interpret- 
ing the  world  and  its  life,  is  the  great  motive  in 
the  characteristic  criticism,  historical  research, 
and  theological  construction  as  at  present  carried 
on  by  Christian  scholars.  The  ultimate  problems 
of  reason  are  so  difficult,  the  final  questions  of 
faith  are  so  urgent  and  perplexing,  that  along  a 
score  of  different  lines  Christian  thinkers  are 
returning  to  their  Master.  It  is  felt  more  and 
more  that  there  can  be  no  substitutes  in  creeds, 
in  church  authority,  in  patristic  tradition,  in 
apostolic  interpretation,  for  him,  and  that  without 
him  there  can  be  no  solution  of  our  human  prob- 
lem. 

The  preacher  must  join  in  this  sublime  return. 
His  question  is  primarily  one  of  moral  dynamics, 
and  it  can  be  met,  as  to-day  it  requires  to  be 


THE  HEAVENLY  VISION.  249 

met,  only  by  a  new  and  profounder  sense  of  the 
meaning  of  Christ  in  the  spiritual  training  of 
mankind.  Paul's  career  as  a  preacher  must  be 
dated  from  the  heavenly  vision  of  the  risen,  reign- 
ing, and  infinite  Lord,  the  vision  to  which  he 
was  not  disobedient.  His  consciousness  of  the 
living  Christ  to  whom  he  belonged,  to  whom  he 
surrendered  himself,  and  for  whom  he  claimed 
the  Jew  and  the  Greek,  the  bond  and  the  free,  is 
the  creative  source  of  his  mighty  ministry.  That 
amazing  vision  was  the  head-waters  of  his  whole 
career;  he  lived  out  of  its  perennial  inspirations, 
refilled  his  heart  from  its  exliaustless  fullness, 
and,  through  a  service  ahnost  unparalleled  in  its 
many-sidedness  and  devotion,  carried  the  signifi- 
cance and  moral  power  of  his  Master  to  the  ends 
of  the  world.  For  Paul  the  only  adequate  inspi- 
ration of  the  preacher  was  the  living,  reigning, 
infinite  Christ,  and  the  only  adequate  work  of 
the  moral  teacher  of  men  was  revealed  through 
the  same  Life.  Paul  was  born  with  a  hunger 
for  righteousness,  and  he  had  sought  it  by  fol- 
lowinof  such  ideals  as  Judaism  could  set  before 
him.  This  method  of  search,  however,  brought 
him  no  peace.  The  ideal  was  not  great  enough 
to  melt  him  into  penitence,  to  transform  him  into 
love,  and  to  run  his  whole  being  into  the  moulds 
of  the  Divine  righteousness.  Despair  began  to 
settle  down  upon  him,  and  that  sort  of  despair 
which  is  most  destructive  of  humanity,  —  moral 


250      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY, 

despair.  Fanaticism  came  to  his  rescue,  and 
gave  liim  a  brief  experience  of  delusive  hope. 
In  the  midst  of  this  trouble,  the  vision  found 
him,  set  before  him  the  old  ideal  of  righteousness, 
now  magnified  and  outshining  the  sun,  and  clothed 
his  spirit  with  the  power  of  moral  attainment, 
jiressed  all  his  powers  into  the  great  and  endless 
pursuit,  and  hung  in  his  imagination  the  image 
of  the  far-oif  crown  of  rectitude  which  he  now 
saw  would  one  day  be  put  upon  his  head.  It 
was  worth  while  to  follow  a  Master  who  could 
thus  change  the  heart  and  begin  in  it  the  deposit 
of  eternal  life.     One  who  could  thus  reveal  right- 

I  eousness  and  confer  the  power  of  progressive 
attainment  must  be  accepted  and  served  as  Lord. 
And  the  object  of  the  great  acceptance  and  ser- 
vice is  thus  defined.  The  world  lies  in  wicked- 
ness, and  yet  it  is  hungry  for  the  strength  and 
consolation  of  moral  self-respect.  The  apostle 
saw,  what  every  preacher  must  see,  that  the  deep- 

«  est  need  of  the  human  heart  is  the  need  of  recti- 
tude. Without  this  wealth,  position,  influence, 
learning,  genius,  high  material  civilization  is  but 
a  city  built  upon  a  bog.  It  must  sink  into  eter- 
nal insignificance  in  the  mud  and  filth  of  unright- 
eousness. The  summiim  honum  is  the  problem, 
not  primarily  of  philosophers,  but  of  humanity, 
and  the  vital  search  that  does  not  lead  to  personal 
rectitude  ends  in  the  bitterness  of  the  Dead  Sea, 
Paul's  Christ  still  concerns  the  preacher,  not  only 


THE  ETERNAL  PEEACHER.  251 

as  adequate  inspiration,  but  also  as  defining  his 
work.  His  is  the  message  of  righteousness,  so 
full  of  ideal  splendors  as  to  overawe  and  win  the 
heart,  so  instinct  with  moral  power  as  to  renew 
the  imbecile  will,  stir  it  to  persistent  endeavor,  * 
and  keep  it  in  the  great  hope  of  ultimate  victory.  / 
The  same  heavenly  vision  gave  this  apostle  an 
adequate  faith.  Everywhere  the  Lord  the  Spirit 
had  gone  before  him,  as  the  Eternal  preacher  of 
righteousness,  and  the  notes  of  his  voice  Paul 
could  hear  in  all  languages  and  in  all  literatures. 
He  who  appeared  to  his  servant  had  the  Divine 
decree  in  his  favor,  and  the  stars  in  their  courses 
were  fighting  for  the  advance  of  his  kingdom. 
This,  in  a  few  words,  is  the  revelation  made  to 
all  Christian  preachers  by  the  first  and  greatest 
of  their  number.  The  Christian  pulpit  is  the 
creation  of  Christ,  and  its  power  will  last  only 
so  long  as  his  spirit  controls  and  inspires  it.  The 
concern  of  this  chapter  with  Christ  is  as  a  sub- 
lime utility  in  the  formation  of  human  character, 
as  the  supreme  instrument  of  the  Spirit  of  God 
in  the  evolution  of  the  religious  life  of  men.  If 
God  is  the  centre  of  the  universe,  Christ  is  the 
centre  of  history,  and  no  reform  or  permanent 
onward  movement  in  society  can  be  accomplished 
or  expected  without  his  intervention  and  support.    / 

John  Stuart  Mill  has  said  that  "it  would  not 
be  easy,  even  for  an  unbeliever,  to  find  a  better 
translation  of  the  rule  of  virtue  from  the  abstract 


252      CHBIST  m  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

into  the  concrete  than  to  endeavor  so  to  live  that 
Christ  would  approve  our  life."  ^  With  the  sup- 
port of  this  statement,  it  cannot  be  presumptuous 
to  affirm  that  the  one  grand  purpose  of  all  gen- 
uine preaching  must  be  to  make  men  like  Christ. 
For  this  end  the  special  gifts,  attainments,  per- 
sonal character,  position,  and  influence  of  the 
individual  preacher  are  employed.  But  the 
preacher  must  have  a  message.  It  must  be  old, 
that  is,  it  must  be  in  keeping  with  the  nature  of 
the  universe,  indorsed  by  the  courses  of  Provi- 
dence, sanctioned  by  the  great  voices  of  history, 
and  in  sympathy  with  the  profoundest  needs  and 
the  loftiest  aspirations  of  mankind.  It  must  also 
be  new,  that  is,  it  is  essential  that  it  should  be 
born  into  the  preacher's  soul  with  overmastering 
vividness,  and  held  there,  in  an  atmosphere  of 
homage  and  in  the  mood  of  obedience,  as  the 
veritable  utterance  of  God.  This  message  will 
include  the  higher  elements  in  the  ethnic  religions, 
the  permanent  ideal  forces  of  Hebraism,  the 
spiritual  wealth  of  Christian  history,  and,  as  the 
sum  and  superlative  form  of  all  ancient  truth  and 
the  incomparable  germ  of  all  later  discoveries, 
Christianity  itseK.  The  preacher's  message  will 
almost  inevitably  connect  itself  in  some  way  with 
the  historic  Christ.  As  a  body  of  truth  to  be 
believed,  and  as  leading  to  a  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse, it  must  compel  men  to  think  of  him ;  and  as 

1  Essays  on  Religion,  p.  255. 


HISTORY  AND   THE  PREACHER.         258 

a  system  of  ideas  and  influences  for  the  education 
of  humanity  in  justice,  mercy,  and  faith,  it  must 
again  connect  itself  with  the  Master.  There  are 
-in  preaching  these  three  things,  —  the  end,  and 
the  method,  and  the  power.  The  end  is  that  men 
may  be  brought  to  God ;  the  power  is  the  energy 
of  ideas  filled  with  the  Spirit  of  God;  and  the 
method  is  the  ascertained  path  of  the  transform- 
ing influence  as  that  has  come  upon  men  in  the 
past.  The  greatest  test  of  the  modern  j)reacher 
occurs  at  this  point.  If  history  has  nothing  to 
say  to  him  as  to  the  mediation  of  God,  he  is  miss- 
ing a  fundamental  truth;  but  if  he  is  able  to 
discover  the  method  of  the  Divine  Spirit  in  the 
past,  he  is  clothing  himself  with  power.  The 
majesty  of  the  end,  that  men  may  come  to  live  in 
the  consciousness  of  the  Eternal  Father,  is  apt, 
in  our  time,  to  obscure  our  sense  of  the  impor- 
tance of  the  method;  and,  without  the  method 
that  history  has  revealed  and  vindicated,  the 
power  can  never  come,  at  least  in  its  fullness. 
Inasmuch  as  the  main  business  of  the  Christian 
pulpit  must  ever  be  to  bring  the  power  of  the 
Infinite  to  bear  upon  the  finite,  to  enable  men  to 
behold  all  things  in  God,  to  interpret  nature, 
social  ties,  and  human  history  in  terms  of  the 
Eternal  Love,  to  inform  the  intellect,  raise  the 
affections,  inspire  the  spirit,  and  shape  the  char- 
acter out  of  the  boundless  and  creative  goodness 
of  God;  and  since  God  is  with  us,  and  we  are 


254      CHBIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

the  inheritors  of  a  vast  spiritual  possession,  —  the 
temptation  is  to  ignore  the  way  in  which  this 
possession  has  come  into  our  hands,  to  separate 
the  idea  and  the  history,  the  divine  message  and 
the  course  of  events  through  which  it  lives,  the 
revelation  of  God  and  the  fields  of  time  and  cir- 
cumstance and  personality  in  which  it  first  blos- 
somed and  came  to  maturity.  If  there  is  any 
pertinence  in  this  discussion,  it  lies  here.  The 
end  and  the  method  and  the  power  cannot  be 
separated.  For  the  religious  consciousness  Christ 
is  a  permanent  necessity;  and  for  the  pulpit  that 
would  purify  and  greaten  that  consciousness,  he 
is  the  mightiest  force  laiown  to  man. 

The  youngest  among  the  present  generation  of 
ministers  can  recall  the  large  place  that  Christ 
held  in  the  preaching  of  other  days.  In  Unita- 
rian and  Trinitarian  pulpits  alike,  there  was 
heard  the  constant  recurrence  of  his  name,  the 
frequent  citation  of  his  teaching,  the  inspiring 
use  of  his  example,  —  above  all,  the  promise  of  the 
mystic  sense  of  God's  pity  and  love  to  those  who 
would  become  his  disciples.  In  the  ministrations 
of  the  older  pulpit,  there  was  a  use  of  the  name 
of  Christ  full  of  rich  significance;  he  had  untold 
immediate  value  to  the  soul,  and  an  infinite  rep- 
resentative value ;  and  as  he  was  presented  to  the 
conscience  and  feeling  of  the  time,  floods  of 
transforming  influence  broke  through  him  upon 
the  hearts  of  men.     We  can  all  recall  the  undo- 


THE  OLDER  PULPIT.  255 

vout  days  in  which  we  made  this  prdpit  habit  the 
subject  of  not  entirely  sympathetic  study.  Prob- 
ably we  concluded  that  the  name  of  Christ  was 
not  always  understood  by  the  men  who  used  it, 
and  sometimes,  I  fear,  we  were  tempted  to  think 
that  the  language  was  excessive  and  overdone. 
Occasionally  a  burst  of  genuine  eloquence  would 
strike  us  in  this  mood  like  a  celestial  cyclone, 
level  our  prejudice  with  the  ground,  scatter  our 
opposition,  and  make  us  feel  in  our  inmost  heart 
the  reality  of  the  mystic  experience  to  which 
Christ  bore  such  transcendent  meaning.  In  the 
presence  of  this  characteristic  mood  of  the  older 
pulpit  of  New  England,  the  question  has  arisen 
whether  this  essentialness  of  Christ  to  the  reli- 
gious consciousness,  and  to  the  powerful  Christian 
j)ulpit,  was  apparent  or  real;  whether  it  was  a 
habit  of  the  time,  generated  by  a  peculiar  system 
of  theology,  or  something  grounded  upon  the 
nature  of  man,  and  consonant  with  the  quickening 
movement  of  God  in  human  history;  whether  it 
was  in  character  artificial  and  temporary,  or  lan- 
guage bearing  in  it  the  image  of  imperishable 
truth,  and  therefore  destined,  amid  whatever 
modifications,  to  persist  in  essential  integrity. 
The  question  now  is,  whether  this  old-fashioned 
Christ-consciousness  is  worthy  of  enthronement 
in  the  pulpits  of  all  communions ;  whether  it  is 
a  version  of  truth  that  can  never  become  obsolete, 
and  a  rendering  of  spiritual  reality  that  should 


256      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULFIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

be  reverently  cherished,  universally  and  thank- 
fully used.  For  myself,  I  believe  that  Paul's 
message  to  the  Corinthians  —  Jesus  Christ  and 
him  crucified  —  is  the  highest  that  has  ever  come 
to  man,  and  the  personal  form  which  the  divine 
idea  assumed  in  the  apostolic  announcement  ap- 
pears to  me  essential  to  the  reality  and  perma- 
nence of  the  idea  itself.  The  mood  of  the  older 
pulpit,  the  mood  indeed  of  the  powerful  pulpits 
in  all  these  centuries  of  Christian  history,  con- 
tains, I  cannot  but  believe,  in  a  solution  of  feel- 
ing, the  truth  that  is  to  renovate  the  world.  That 
truth  is  God  in  Christ  reconciling  this  primarily 
animal  and  sensuous  world  unto  himself,  and  lift- 
ing it  by  his  own  mediated  might  into  the  life 
and  freedom  of  the  Spirit.  For  all  men  Christ 
must  become  more  and  more  the  Supreme  Medi- 
ator of  God,  and  must  not  the  pulpit  that  is  to 
grow  in  power  lay  stronger  emphasis  upon  the 
personality  of  the  Mediator? 

I. 

As  a  preliminary  in  the  discussion  of  the 
place  of  Christ  in  the  pulpit  of  to-day,  it  must 
be  remarked  that  preachers  need  to  revive  the 
sense  of  the  supremacy  of  their  calling  by  living 
more  completely  under  the  shadow  of  the  Divine 
Preacher.  Preaching  has  in  a  way  become  uni- 
versal. All  the  sciences,  all  the  noble  arts,  and 
all  serious  schemes  of  thought  j)oint  finally  to  life 


PBEACHING   UNIVERSAL.  257 

as  their  grand  ultimate.  The  ethical  issues  of 
all  departments  of  knowledge  are  under  universal 
consideration,  and  the  application  of  ideas  to  life 
is  the  calling  that  includes  the  serious  and  posi- 
tive nature  everywhere.  This  fact  has  bewildered 
the  preacher  of  Christianity,  and  at  times  made 
him  ready  to  confess  that  the  pulpit  had  lost  its 
power.  It  remains  true,  whatever  reason  may 
be  assigned  for  it,  that  there  exists  a  widespread 
undervaluation  of  the  prophetic  office  in  the 
Christian  ministry.  Societies,  organizations,  ex- 
ecutive power,  business  ability,  are  common  sub- 
stitutes for  the  noble  supremacy  of  the  preacher's 
soul  through  his  sermon.  -Preachers  need  to 
return  to  their  Divine  Master  along  this  line. 
He  created  no  outward  society,  formed  no  insti- 
tution, relied  for  the  permanence  of  his  influence 
upon  no  administration.  He  was  the  chief  of 
preachers,  and  moved  upon  the  mind  of  his  time 
through  his  imperishable  w^ords.  Never  man 
spake  as  he  did,  and  one  of  the  reasons  for  this 
unique  power  of  speech  was  that  he  believed  in 
the  office  of  speech.  He  made  his  words  unfor- 
getable ;  he  coined  them  in  terms  of  eternal  truth 
and  beauty  and  love;  he  adjusted  them  to  the 
historic  sense,  the  immediate  sympathies,  and 
the  largest  hopes  of  those  whom  he  addressed; 
he  fashioned  them  in  the  feeling  of  humanity, 
bathed  them  in  the  undefinable  dreams  of  the 
soul,  informed  them  with  the  sanctity  of  slum- 


258      CHRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

bering  sorrows  and  ideals,  constituted  tliem  the 
heralds  of  a  new  day,  the  apostles  of  a  divine 
world  for  mankind.  The  Lord  was  not  an  ex- 
tempore preacher,  even  if  he  did  not  use  notes. 
Consideration  is  the  mark  of  every  utterance  of 
his;  and  the  wondrous  message  ran  in  forms  of 
speech,  that  are  matchless.  His  kingdom  was 
not  of  this  world.  He  had  no  system  of  govern- 
ment, no  magistrates,  no  army  and  no  police,  no 
mighty  external  contrivance  to  give  him  ascend- 
ency over  mankind.  He  relied  upon  the  abso- 
luteness of  his  thought,  the  divineness  of  his  feel- 
ing, and  the  fitness  and  unforgetableness  of  his 
speech,  to  win  for  him  his  empire.  And  Caesar 
is  gone,  but  Christ  remains.  Out  of  the  golden 
tradition  of  the  Lord's  preaching  came  the  gos- 
pels, and  from  it  as  inspiration  came  the  whole 
body  of  New  Testament  literature.  The  Word 
conceived  in  truth,  born  in  love,  and  spoken  in  the 
fullness  of  insight  and  power,  is  the  foundation  of 
Christendom.  The  prophetic  office  of  the  minis- 
try, the  calling  of  the  preacher,  is  the  corner- 
stone of  our  civilization ;  and  if  the  present  mem- 
bers of  this  calling  shall  live  in  the  consciousness 
of  Christ  the  preacher,  there  will  be  a  universal 
revival  of  confidence  in  their  vocation. 

When  Phillips  Brooks  died,  a  New  York  paper 
remarked  that,  inasmuch  as  he  was  a  preacher, 
his  influence  was  necessarily  a  passing  one,  and 
the  superficial  generalization  went  with  the  force 


LONGEVITY  IN  BOOKS.  259 

of  an  axiom.  The  idea  was  that  this  man,  hav- 
ing done  nothing  in  the  way  of  pure  literature, 
must  soon  be  forgotten,  and  that  when  forgotten 
his  influence  must  be  regarded  as  at  an  end. 
Now,  with  all  due  respect  to  literary  gentlemen, 
it  may  be  questioned  whether  out  of  the  half- 
dozen  books  that  Phillips  Brooks  left  behind 
him,  as  many  of  them  will  not  be  alive  a  cen- 
tury hence  as  in  the  case  of  a  similar  number 
produced  by  any  book-maker  of  his  generation. 
The  books  that  have  longevity,  like  the  men,  are 
those  of  robust,  vital  constitution.  Form  is 
indispensable  to  the  noblest  utterance,  written  or 
spoken,  or  done  in  color  or  stone,  or  musical 
sounds.  But  life  is  a  vastly  deeper  assurance  of 
permanence  than  form  where  the  two  must  be 
contrasted ;  and  if  there  is  life  enough  in  a  word 
it  will  survive,  although  it  be  as  enigmatical  as 
the  sayings  of  Heraclitus.  If  there  is  vitality  in 
a  book,  it  will  last  even  if  its  form  be  as  poor  as 
that  of  the  works  of  Aristotle.  The  gift  of 
rhyme  is  no  passport  to  immortality:  there  are 
as  many  forgotten  poets  in  the  English  language 
as  there  are  authors  of  sermons.  Insight,  love, 
pure  power,  serviceableness  to  humanity,  —  these 
are  the  forces  by  which  books  survive.  The 
incompatibility  with  literature  of  the  highest  pos- 
sible form  of  pulpit  production  is  refuted  by  the 
Parables  of  Jesus.  The  compass  of  the  thought 
is  beyond  definition,  the  movement  of  feeling  is 


1 


260      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

like  a  heaving  sea  of  divine  passion,  and  the  form 
is  that  of  the  consummate  artist.  The  question 
of  art  is  not  primarily  one  of  imagination.  It  is 
an  issue  raised  first  of  all  by  life.  The  perfect 
art  has  its  complete  illustration  and  vindication 
only  in  the  Incarnation.^  The  Divine  idea  per- 
fectly uttered  in  the  Divine  Life  sets  the  standi 
ard  for  all  beauty.  When  the  Word  became 
flesh,  the  life  of  man  became  master,  and  the 
imagination  of  genius  sank  to  its  place  of  due 
subordination  as  servant.  The  consummate  liter- 
ary art  of  Jesus  begins  from  his  perfect  embodi- 
ment of  his  Father's  will.  Out  of  the  supremacy 
of  his  humanity  comes  his  inapproachable  mastery 
over  the  forms  of  beauty.  "True  or  not,"  as 
Romanes  well  says,  the  "  entire  story  of  the  cross, 
from  its  commencement  in  prophetic  aspiration 
to  its  culmination  in  the  gospel,  is  by  far  the 
most  magnificent  presentation  in  literature.  And 
surely  the  fact  of  its  having  all  been  lived  does 
not  detract  from  its  poetic  value.  Nor  does  the 
fact  of  its  being  capable  of  appropriation  by 
the  individual  Christian  of  to-day  as  still  a  vital 
religion  detract  from  its  sublimity.  Only  to  a 
man  wholly  destitute  of  spiritual  perception  can 
it  be  that  Christianity  should  fail  to  appear  the 
greatest  exhibition  of  the  beautiful,  the  sublime, 
and  of  all  else  that  appeals  to  our  spiritual 
nature  which   has    ever   been   known   upon   the 

1  See  Westcott's  Essay,  The  Relation  of  Christianity  to  Art. 


PAUL'S  LETTERS.  261 

earth."  1  The  harmony  of  great  qualities  in 
Christ  is  final.  The  study  of  the  gospels  as 
literature  has  resulted  in  a  keener  appreciation 
both  of  the  thought  and  the  art  in  the  teaching 
of  Jesus.  He  is  the  standard  for  morality  and 
for  art,  the  consummate  expression  of  both.  The 
immortality  of  his  teaching  is  sure,  because  the 
thought  is  final  and  the  form  surpassing,  because 
the  life  eternal  is  there  in  a  body  that  cannot 
even  grow  old.  And  when  one  comes  to  works 
that  are  far  beneath  this  absolute  standard,  the 
promise  of  permanence  is  great  and  sure  in 
proportion  to  their  vitality.  The  form  of  Paul's 
letters  is  far  from  artistic.  Eloquent  and  won- 
derful as  they  are  in  passages,  the  literary  ex- 
pression cannot  as  a  whole  be  ranked  high.  Set- 
ting aside  single  chapters  that  for  majesty  and 
beauty  are  unsurpassed  in  the  literature  of  the 
world,  his  writings  as  a  body  are  exceedingly 
informal.  He  had  no  sense  of  their  worth,  no  re- 
motest suspicion  that  they  would  be  more  highly 
prized  two  thousand  years  after  his  death  than 
in  his  own  day.  They  were  the  answers  of  a 
wise  and  teeming  mind  to  the  needs  of  the  hour, 
and  the  thought  of  book-making  never  entered 
their  author's  brain.  And  yet,  with  the  excej)- 
tion  of  the  Parables  of  Jesus,  there  are  no  writ- 
ings in  the  world  so  much  alive  and  so  pro- 
foundly influential  as  the  correspondence  of  Paul 

1  Thoughts  on  Reli^on,  p.  160. 


262      CUBIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

witli  the  Christian  churches  of  his  time.  What- 
ever has  life  in  it  will  last,  and  the  sermons  of 
Phillips  Brooks  have  as  much  of  that  high  power 
in  them  as  any  of  the  prose  productions  of  the 
generation  to  which  he  belon.^ed. 

But  the  assumption,  that  when  a  man  is  for- 
gotten his  influence  is  necessarily  over,  is  wholly 
unfounded.  Keeping  to  Bishop  Brooks  as  a 
convenient  and  magnificent  symbol,  it  must  be 
said  that  his  publications  are  the  smallest  part 
of  him.  There  are  thousands  of  living  men  and 
women  whose  characters  he  touched  with  trans- 
forming power,  and  who  are  the  transmitters  of 
the  great  vital  impulse  received  from  him.  While 
the  generation  lasts  to  which  he  spoke,  his  in- 
fluence in  the  world  will  be  conscious  and  con- 
trolling. There  is  always  danger  that  the  good 
book  may  be  prized  above  the  good  man,  which 
is  fatal  folly.  But  it  is  said  that  men  die  and 
books  live  on.  To  this  it  must  be  replied  that 
the  average  term  of  man's  existence  is  gTeatly  in 
excess  of  that  of  even  powerful  books.  One  half 
of  the  human  race,  it  is  computed,  die  in  in- 
fancy, and  it  is  believed  that  a  similar  compu- 
tation would  show  that  infant  mortality  among 
literary  productions  is  greater  far.  If  it  be  true 
that  those  whom  the  gods  love  die  young,  nine 
tenths  of  the  books  published  must  be  very  highly 
regarded  in  heaven.  More  human  beings  than 
books  can  be  found,  out  of  every  generation,  who 


THE  MOTHER  AS  TEACHER.  263 

have  attained  the  age  of  oire  hundred  years.     Set- 
ting aside  the  few  books  that  cannot  die,  to  the 
number  of  which  a  remarkable  century  adds  one 
or  two  perhaps,  a  human  being  is  a  vastly  better 
investment  than  a  novel,  or  a  treatise  scientific, 
philosophical,  or  theological.     The  hope  of  the 
true  book-maker  is  that  his  publication  may  meet 
a   sympathetic  mind,    fertilize    it,    command  its 
spiritual  power,   and  thus  prolong  its  life  after 
death.     The   office   of   the   mother    is   infinitely 
greater  than  that  of  the  successful  novelist.     The 
mothers  rule  the  world  from  their  graves.     In 
the  influence  of  Edwards  and  Bushnell  and  Emer- 
son and  Carlyle,  that  of  their  first  and  greatest 
teachers  still  lives.     What  the  last  of  these  writ- 
ers has   said  of  his  mother  has  its  echo  in  the 
heart  of  our  whole  nobler  humanity.     "O  pious 
mother!  kind,  good,  brave,  and  truthful  soul  as 
I  have  ever  found,  and  more  than  I  have  ever 
elsewhere  found  in  this  world,  your  poor  Tom, 
long  out  of  his  school-days  now,  has  fallen  very 
lonely,  very  lame  and  broken,  in  this  j)ilgrimage 
of  his;    and  you  cannot  help  him  or  cheer  him 
by  a  kind  word  any  more.     From  your  grave  in 
Ecclefechan  Kirkyard  yonder  you  bid  him  trust 
in  God,  and  that  also  he  will  try  if  he  can  under- 
stand and  do.''^     There  was  a  time  when  noble 
women  forgot  their  sorrow  for  joy  that  a  man 
was  born  into  the  world ;  now  it  is  the  issue  of 
1  Life  of  Carlyle,  vol.  iv.  p.  127. 


264      CHEIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

a  novel  that  scatters  the  deep  anxieties.  Old 
Socrates  was  right  in  thinking  more  of  the  sym- 
pathetic and  large-minded  pupil  than  of  the  liter- 
ary production.  The  works  of  Plato  are  rich 
and  priceless,  but  Plato  himelf  is  largely  the 
work  of  Socrates.  And  the  greatest  achieve- 
ment of  the  master  of  the  Academy  was  that  he 
moulded  the  thought  and  evolved  the  intellectual 
power  of  Aristotle.  If  fate  should  submit  for 
the  choice  of  the  gifted  and  powerful  a  good 
book  or  a  great  character  to  bear  abroad  and 
continue  his  influence  in  the  world,  he  would  be 
a  fool  who  should  choose  the  book  in  preference 
to  the  character.  Even  if  their  tombstones,  un- 
like that  of  Fichte's,  make  no  mention  of  it,  the 
prophecy  is  forever  true  that  "the  teachers  shall 
shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmament,  and  they 
that  turn  many  to  righteousness  as  the  stars  for 
ever  and  ever."  ^ 

This  is  the  great  principle  underlying  the 
strange  conceit  of  apostolical  succession.  The 
conceit  is,  that  episcopal  ordination  runs  back  to 
the  ordination  which  the  apostles  received  from 
Christ,  and  that  to  the  hands  of  bishops  the  grace 
that  truly  consecrates  a  man  to  the  work  of  the 
Christian  ministry  is  confined.  The  great  princi- 
ple is,  that  life  comes  only  from  life,  and  that  the 
moral  and  spiritual  power  of  the  present  generation 
is  largely  derived  from  the  holy  succession  that 

1  Dan.  xii.  3. 


APOSTOLICAL  SUCCESSION.  265 

goes  back  to  the  creative  soul  of  Christ  for  its  en- 
dowment. The  unseen  is  still  over  the  Christian 
world,  and  its  doors  are  not  shut  against  its  prayers 
and  faith.  The  windows  of  heaven  are  ever  open, 
and  the  flood  of  life  is  always  descending  into  hospi° 
table  souls.  But  all  the  good  that  believers  enjoy 
does  not  come  in  that  direct  way.  History  means 
more  than  even  the  profoundest  thinker  can 
know ;  the  ordering  of  human  beings  in  a  grand 
succession  in  time  counts  for  much  in  the  educa- 
tion and  achievements  of  mankind.  Jesus  gath- 
ered about  him  the  finest  youth  of  his  time.  He 
moulded  their  thought,  controlled  their  passion, 
dominated  their  will,  and  gave  them  the  life  of 
God.  They  went  forth  with  the  vital  supply 
which  grew  greater  the  more  it  was  drawn  upon, 
and  established  their  supremacy  over  thousands. 
Again  the  receivers  became  givers,  the  conquered 
conquerors,  and  the  tide  of  Divine  life  rolled 
over  new  spaces  of  our  common  humanity.  And 
so  it  has  rolled  on  down  to  our  own  generation. 
It  is  the  stream  that  makes  glad  the  city  of  God. 
It  has  its  head-waters  in  Christ,  and  its  sacred 
and  ever-broadening  channel  is  the  multitude 
that  no  man  can  number  that  in  each  generation 
have  believed  that  the  surest  way  to  j)erpetuate 
personal  power  in  the  earth  is  to  charge  a  sue-  | 
cessor  wdth  the  life  of  the  Lord. 

In  order    to    develop    the  full  power  of   the 
preacher  there  must  be  cherished  a  supreme  in- 


266      CHRIST  IN  TUE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

difference  to  the  remembrance  of  mankind.  One 
must  rise  into  the  mood  that  beholds  the  great 
moral  task  of  humanity,  and  that  sees  that  every 
true  word  and  every  pure  and  brave  life,  whether 
remembered  or  forgotten,  is  a  permanent  contri- 
bution to  the  final  victorious  accomplishment  of 
that  task.  The  supreme  question  is  not  whether 
one  is  known  as  having  part  in  the  great  enterprise, 
but  whether  one  has  in  very  truth  a  living  influ- 
ence in  it.  It  is  a  sacred  inducement  to  this 
hio:h  mood  to  recall  the  familiar  fact  that  our 
civilization  is  largely  the  product  of  the  forgot- 
ten. The  farms  of  England  are  a  delight  to  the 
eye,  they  are  laid  out  with  so  much  symmetry ; 
the  fences  of  hedge  and  stone  are  so  fine;  the 
face  of  the  earth  wears  a  cultured  look,  and 
exactness  and  neatness  reign  everywhere.  To 
whom  are  Englishmen  to-day  indebted  for  bring- 
ing the  primeval  forest  into  this  condition?  To 
more  than  fifty  generations  of  forgotten  toilers. 
It  is  largely  the  magnificent  gift  to  the  present 
of  dead  and  unremembered  men.  The  face  of 
their  country  they  changed;  they  made  it  rich 
with  f ruitf vdness  and  bright  with  enduring  beauty. 
Their  names  have  perished,  but  their  work  re- 
mains. The  same  holds  true  of  the  methods  of 
business.  The  epochs  in  the  changes  of  business, 
like  those  consequent  upon  the  use  of  steam  and 
electricity,  are  remembered;  but  the  multitudes 
of  minor  important  changes  are  associated  with 


OUR  DEBT  TO   THE  PAST.  267 

no  names.  The  business  youth  of  to-day  is  the 
inheritor  of  a  system  of  untold  value,  perfected 
by  hosts  of  sagacious  men  working  in  concert, 
who  have  passed  forever  into  oblivion.  The 
ocean  steamer  of  to-day  is  an  evolution  through 
gradual  improvements  from  the  canoe  of  the 
savage.  The  history  gathered  up  in  one  of  these 
masterj)ieces  of  naval  architecture  is  singularly 
impressive.  Every  rib  of  steel,  every  bolt  and 
spar,  every  rope  in  the  rigging,  every  foot  of 
construction  from  stem  to  stern,  from  keel  to 
deck,  and  from  deck  to  the  pennant  flying  from 
the  main  royal  mast,  embodies  the  successive  and 
accumulated  inventions  of  uncounted  generations 
of  forgotten  men  of  genius.  The  anonymous  even 
in  good  literature  is  striking.  No  form  of  con- 
temporary writing  is  more  powerful  than  the 
press.  The  newsj^aper  wields,  from  the  depth  to 
the  height  of  society,  an  unmeasured  mfluence. 
These  issues  descend  upon  the  community  every 
morning  and  evening  thick  as  snowflakes.  They 
change  the  complexion  of  public  opinion,  and  for 
the  most  part  the  change  is  an  improvement. 
Untold  good  is  done,  and  untold  evil  is  averted, 
by  the  daily  newspaper.  The  learning,  ability, 
and  industry  represented  by  it  are  immense,  and 
they  are  anonymous.  Many  of  our  finest  ballads 
are  of  unknown  authorship,  many  of  our  noblest 
hymns  have  broken  loose  from  all  personal  moor- 
ings, and  are  adrift  in  the  rich  and  nameless  ser- 


268      CHRIST  m   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

vice  of  mankind.  It  is  impossible  to  break  up  tlie 
fragrance  in  the  summer  air  and  parcel  it  out  as 
the  contribution  of  separate  flowers.  So  with 
many  of  our  songs  and  hymns.  They  are  the 
sweet  exhalations  of  unknown  souls.  It  is  at  first 
almost  bewildering  to  think  that  this  anonymous- 
ness  reaches  to  some  of  the  masterpieces  of  litera- 
ture. The  authorship  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  is 
past  finding  out.  That  wonder  of  literature,  the 
Book  of  Job,  is  a  nameless  book.  The  man  who 
first  faced  the  whole  problem  of  human  suffering, 
who  gathered  into  his  words  the  sighs  of  countless 
centuries,  who  poured  forth  in  mournful  and  ma- 
jestic utterance  his  sense  of  the  mystery  of  life, 
who  drew  a  character  that  for  sublime  resignation 
and  immortal  love  of  the  Divine,  cannot  be 
matched  in  the  whole  range  of  human  composi- 
tions,—  the  spiritual  genius  who  enriched  the 
world  with  this  unsurpassed  work  of  truth  and  art 
and  life  has  left  no  trace  of  himself  in  the  memory 
of  mankind.  What  is  called  the  higher  criticism 
is  largely  an  increased  sense  of  the  treasure  men 
have  in  the  Old  Testament,  combined  with  a  fresh 
realization  of  the  fact  that  they  know  not  whom  to 
thank  for  the  great  inheritance.  Who  wrote  the 
inimitable  biographies  in  the  Book  of  Genesis? 
Who  produced  the  magnificent  historical  epic  of 
the  Exodus?  Who  first  told  the  story  of  Ruth? 
Who  composed  the  greatest  ode  in  all  literature, 
the  ninetieth  psalm  ?   Out  of  what  soul  of  love  came 


THE  ANONYMOUS  IN  LIFE.  269 

the  hymns  of  Israel,  written  as  they  are  "m  star- 
fire  and  immortal  tears  "  ?  Who  was  it  who  laid 
bare  his  whole  heart  in  Ecelesiastes  ?  To  whom 
are  we  indebted  for  the  vision  of  the  conqueror 
from  Edom  and  the  suffering  servant  of  Jehovah  ? 
Of  much  that  is  most  precious  in  literature,  of 
much  that  is  mightiest  in  the  Bible,  one  must  say, 
what  Origen  said  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
"no  one  knows  the  authorship  of  it  but  God.'' 
Civilization  is  largely  the  product  of  the  unre- 
membered.  Taking  that  of  Great  Britain  as  a 
convenient  illustration,  one  finds  it  almost  im- 
possible to  imagine  the  labor  represented  in  it. 
English  history  is  but  a  hint  at  the  infinite  unre- 
corded. One  thinks  of  the  missionaries  that  were 
sent  out  into  the  heathenism  of  the  land,  the 
hosts  of  successors  in  other  generations,  the 
schools  and  universities  that  grew  out  of  the  pas- 
sion for  the  spread  of  Christian  truth,  the  books 
brought  into  existence  to  guide  the  thought  and 
fire  the  spirit  of  common  men,  the  language  born 
of  love  and  inspired  with  renewing  grace.  One 
thinks  of  the  toil  represented  in  the  physical 
fibre,  the  mental  habit,  and  the  moral  character 
of  the  people  in  the  whole  complex  and  stupen- 
dous achievement  of  British  civilization ;  and  one 
beholds  through  it  a  host  of  forgotten  teachers, 
preachers,  authors,  workers,  and  sufferers  all,  in 
multitude  like  the  stars.  Once  for  all,  fame  is 
excluded.     The  preacher  shares  the  common  lot. 


270      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

His  calling  is  under  no  special  ban.  God  buries 
f  his  workmen  in  oblivion,  but  carries  on  liis  work. 
The  longing  of  a  form  of  service  which  shall 
insure  an  earthly  immortality,  or  an  approach  to 
it,  is  futile.  That  is  the  fortune  of  but  few ;  and 
one  who  deserves  it  is  as  likely  to  find  it  in  the 
ministry  as  anywhere  else.  The  preacher  Luther 
is  as  sure  of  remembrance  as  the  poet  Dante. 
The  question  does  not  turn  upon  the  nature  of 
the  calling,  but  upon  the  size  of  the  man.  And 
it  may  be  put  down  as  certain  that  only  a  hand- 
ful of  men  out  of  any  age  are  big  enough  to  be 
discernible  at  the  distance  of  a  thousand  years. 
'  The  eternal  incentive  comes  from  love.  The 
universe  is  not  anonymous;  God's  work  always 
bears  his  signature.  The  preacher  is  in  a  divine 
world,  and  the  vision  of  it,  and  the  hope  that 
he  may  aid  in  making  that  world  the  abode  of 
the  whole  human  race,  is  a  motive  with  infinite 
reserves  of  power. 

The  office  of  the  preacher  opens  a  door  to  influ- 
ence as  wide  as  that  offered  by  any  other  calling 
on  the  earth.  It  has  room  for  the  best  exercise 
of  the  largest  gifts,  and  permits  the  richest  forms 
of  intellectual  and  spiritual  attainment.  It  leaves 
little  time  for  antiquarian  taste,  for  the  pursuit 
of  studies  that  are  ornamental  rather  than  useful. 
There  are  ten  thousand  things  that  need  to  be 
done  in  the  intellectual  world  that  the  preacher 
cannot  do.     But  the  same  thinsf  must  be  said  of 


GREATNESS  OF  THE  MINISTRY.  271 

the  poet,  the  scientist,  the  philosopher,  the  lin- 
guist, and  every  other  citizen  in  the  republic 
of  thought.  Division  of  labor  and  a  rigid  form 
of  specialism  is  the  common  universal  necessity. 
Still,  measuring  calling  against  calling,  there  is 
none  for  which  ideas  have  an  interest  so  deep, 
and  a  worth  so  immediate  and  indispensable,  as 
the  office  of  the  preacher.  To  the  thoroughly 
equipped  preacher  of  to-day  science  has  a  won- 
derful message.  He  absorbs  the  principle,  the 
ideal  strength,  of  her  message,  passing  over  the 
detail  that  belongs  to  the  specialist.  The  great 
ideas  that  lie  in  the  philosoj)hic  systems  of  the 
world  have  more  vitality  and  utility  for  the 
preacher  than  for  the  thmker  who  is  aiming  at 
the  production  of  a  scheme  that  shall  render  ob- 
solete the  whole  mass  of  preceding  speculation. 
These  systems  of  thought  are  mines  which  only 
the  man  in  sympathetic  ethical  contact  with  man- 
kind can  operate  to  advantage.  The  learning  of 
the  historian  of  philosophy  he  cannot  possess,  but 
the  great  thoughts  of  the  past  he  may  master 
and  make  his  own  as  few  can.  The  same  may 
be  said  of  literature.  The  niceties  of  the  study 
and  the  erudition  of  the  literary  commentator 
he  may  not  have,  but  the  spiritual  possession  of 
the  vision  and  the  passion  of  the  world's  great 
artists  he  may  assuredly  have.  No  form  of  human 
service  is  better  fitted  than  the  Christian  min- 
istry to  reveal  the  vitality  that  is  the  source  of 


272      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

all  great  literature.  To  the  preacher,  literature 
must  ever  be  sacred  as  one  of  the  forms  of  beauty 
into  which  the  race  has  put  its  deepest,  most  reli- 
gious life.  For  him,  more  than  for  most  men, 
its  secret  must  be  an  open  secret. 

"  Yet,  wath  hands  of  evil  stained 
And  an  ear  by  discord  pained, 
He  is  groping-  for  the  keys 
Of  the  heavenly  harmonies." 

Even  Lowell  has  left  nothing  profounder  or  more 
adequate  on  this  perennial  theme  than  Phillips 
Brooks's  essay  entitled  "Literature  and  Life."^ 
It  is  a  classic  vindication  of  literature,  readier  to 
yield  her  deepest  thoughts  and  purposes  to  the 
preacher  than  to  most  men.  As  for  history,  it 
has  a  human  interest,  a  symbolic  significance,  an 
imaginative  value,  for  the  minister  of  Christ  such 
as  it  can  have  for  no  other  man.  Time  is  too 
limited,  duties  are  too  numerous  and  urgent,  to 
allow  the  man  in  charge  of  a  parish  to  be  a  master 
of  detail  anywhere ;  but,  according  to  his  native 
intellectual  gift,  he  may  live  with  the  ideal  forces 
of  the  world  in  a  measure  and  manner  preemi- 
nent. Preaching  may  keep  him  in  the  kingdom 
of  truth  and  love,  sensible  of  its  transcendence, 
lifted  by  the  vision  of  its  wealth  and  limitless 
reach;  and  his  sermons  may  be  strong  and  beau- 
tiful embodiments  of  the  thouo'hts  which  to  him 
are  the  ultimate  realities  of  the  world.     The  pro- 

^  Essays  and  Addresses. 


THE  SUFFICIENT  MOTIVE.  273 

phetic  office  of  Christ  meant  tlie  measureless  and 
infallible  vision  of  the  truth,  the  homage,  and  the 
hope  of  the  heart,  the  strength  and  freedom  of 
the  character,  the  full  communion  with  the  Divine 
world  and  the  human.  For  Jesus,  the  calling  of 
the  preacher  was  largest  opportunity,  the  endless 
expansion  of  thought  and  life  and  influence. 
And  for  those  who  are  baptized  into  the  faith  of 
the  Master,  the  ministry  will  be  the  name  for  the 
same  august  opportunity.  The  call  to  preach 
the  gospel  will  be  the  invitation  to  the  largest 
and  richest  intellectual  life,  to  a  career  in  con- 
stant communion  with  the  ideal  forces  of  the 
world  and  the  needs  of  the  human  heart,  to  citi- 
zenship in  the  republic  of  truth  and  beauty  and 
love,  and  to  the  production  of  such  sermons  as 
shall  be  the  preacher's  homage  to  the  divine  and 
his  lovins:  tribute  to  the  souls  of  his  fellow-men. 
The  thought  of  the  permanence  of  these  produc- 
tions will  not  trouble  him.  The  only  permanent 
forces  are  God's  thoughts,  and  God's  growing, 
apprehending  children;  and  sermons  will  be  pro- 
duced with  the  same  affluent  indifference  as  the 
earth  produces  flowers.  Both  the  flowers  and  the 
sermons  are  perishable,  but  the  life  out  of  which 
they  come  and  that  to  which  they  minister  is 
eternal;  and  the  preacher's  homage  is  to  the 
creative  Life,  and  the  ever-growing  human  need. 
Whether  Paul  wrote  the  pastoral  epistles  or  not, 
that  is  a  genuine  Pauline  expression:  "I  thank 


274      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

him  that  enabled  me,  even  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord, 
for  that  he  counted  me  faithful,  putting  me  into 
his  service."  ^  He  rightly  saw  that  to  this  calling 
he  owed  his  insight,  his  opportunity,  his  know- 
ledge of  the  world,  his  sympathy  with  mankind, 
his  expanded  intellect,  his  greatened  character 
and  ever-widening  influence  in  bringing  in  the 
kino-dom  of  God.  It  was  the  multitude  of  cow- 
ards  that  made  Gideon's  army  so  worthless  at 
the  first.  After  it  was  reduced  to  the  immortal 
three  hundred  it  became  invincible.  It  is  the 
unbelievers  in  the  prophetic  office  who  are  in  the 
ministry,  those  who  are  drunk  with  other  inter- 
ests and  incapable  in  this,  who  demoralize  the 
pulpits  of  the  land.  The  churches  are  waiting 
for  a  new  generation  of  preachers  who  shall  study 
their  calling  in  the  light  of  Christ's  career,  and 
come  forth  with  boundless  confidence  in  it  as 
furnishing  room  for  the  exercise  of  the  greatest 
gifts,  and  an  opportunity  for  the  most  extended 
and  enduring  influence.  As  Dr.  Martineau  said 
nearly  fifty  years  ago:  "He  who  finds  room, 
under  the  conditions  of  the  sermon,  to  interest 
and  engage  his  whole  soul,  would  be  guilty  of 
a:uectation  were  he  to  disown  the  occasion  which 
wakes  up  his  worthiest  spirit,  and  which,  however 
narrow  when  measured  by  the  capacities  of  other 
men,  is  adequate  to  receive  his  best  thought  and 
aspirations."  ^     Although   the    author    of    these 

1  1  Tim.  i.  12. 

2  Endeavors  after  the  Christian  Life,  preface  to  second  series. 


CANDIDATES  FOR  MORALITY.  275 

words  long  since  graduated  from  the  regular 
ministry,  lie  has  carried  into  his  profoundest 
work  the  prophetic  gift,  and  the  high  distinction 
of  his  thinking  is  that  everywhere  the  ethical 
interest  is  kept  clearly  and  reverently  in  view 
as  final  and  absolute. 

II. 

Another  preliminary  that  must  not  be  whoUy 
omitted  is  that  the  presentation  of  Jesus  as  the 
embodiment  of  the  pity  of  God  must  continue 
to  be  one  of  the  great  themes  of  the  preacher. 
Some  one  has  said  that  men  are  candidates  for 
rationality  rather  than  strictly  rational,  and  the 
remark  may  be  extended  to  other  aspects  of  hu- 
man life.  The  multitudes  are  candidates  for 
morality  rather  than  the  possessors  of  moral 
character.  They  are  largely  children  of  impulse, 
with  a  moral  ideal  and  hope  rather  than  a  moral 
experience.  The  calling  of  the  Christian  is  saint- 
hood, but  the  actual  life  struggles  forward  at  a 
tremendous  distance  behind  this  flying-goal.  In 
a  well-ordered,  homogeneous,  highly  educated 
community  one  does  not  realize  readily  the  full 
meaning  of  Jesus  as  the  embodied  pity  of  the 
Infinite.  The  average  of  character  is  so  high, 
the  measure  of  success  is  so  great,  the  conscious- 
ness of  worth  and  moral  strength  is  so  real  and 
inspiring,  that  one  is  apt  to  forget  the  condition 
of   the   outstanding  world.     When   an   honored 


276      CHRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

man  is  laid  to  rest,  one  thinks  of  the  noble  use 
to  which  talent  and  opportunity  have  been  turned, 
and  of  the  "Well  done!  "  that  must  be  his  wel- 
come in  the  unseen.  If  one  is  living  in  circles 
that  are  Christian  by  inheritance,  whose  men  and 
women  have  a  strength  that  represents  the  con- 
quests of  many  generations  of  aggressive  charac- 
ter, there  is  one  supreme  aspect  of  the  gospel 
that  is  likely  to  count  for  nothing.  Jesus  could 
not  at  first  mean  the  same  thing  to  Paul  as  to 
the  penitent  thief.  The  apostle  could  get  at  that 
aspect  of  the  gospel  only  as  he  transcended  his 
own  inheritance,  education,  imperious  will,  and 
preeminently  successful  career.  At  the  present 
time  the  Salvation  Army  has  revived  this  part  of 
the  Christian  message.  The  gospel  is  not  con- 
cerned only  with  successful  lives:  it  extends  to 
the  vaster  number  of  the  unsuccessful.  The 
larger  part  of  mankind  fall  at  length  and  justly 
into  the  mood  of  the  penitent  thief.  Life  has 
been  one  long  and  miserable  mistake.  Foolish 
interests  have  been  cultivated  at  the  expense  of 
wiser  ones ;  selfish  courses  have  been  chosen,  and 
those  that  were  noble  rejected;  courage  and  devo- 
tion have  been  diverted  from  their  legitimate 
objects,  and  wasted  upon  the  vain  and  impossi- 
ble; the  beauty  and  the  chivalry  of  existence 
have  been  sacrificed,  not  to  the  Eternal  Holiness, 
but  to  Moloch ;  the  early,  infinitely  beautiful,  and 
prophetic  blossom  of  manhood  and  womanhood 


THE  UNSUCCESSFUL.  277 

was  blasted  and  no  fruit  lias  followed;  the  homes 
founded  upon  the  instincts,  and  for  a  while  pene- 
trated by  great  affections,  exhausted  their  moral 
and  emotional  outfit  and  became  dwellings  in  the 
dust;  business  careers  that  promised  well  have 
sunk  to  an  unequal  struggle  to  keep  the  wolf 
from  the  door;  and  old  age,  that  in  the  distance 
seemed  a  reservation  for  the  quieting  of  the  heart, 
is  visited  by  unexpected  anxieties  and  sorrows. 
This  is  the  outline  of  a  history  not  very  far  from 
universal.  Men  are  overborne;  the  odds  against 
them  prove  too  many;  they  labor  on,  but  under 
the  sense  of  failure.  Now  for  this  consciousness 
of  failure  nothing  can  take  the  place  of  the  pity 
of  God  in  Christ.  To  speak  of  the  pity  of  God, 
without  Christ,  will  not  do  in  this  instance.  The 
compassionating  man  may  lead  to  belief  in  the 
compassionating  God;  at  all  events,  there  is  no 
other  path  to  faith  for  the  comitless  multitudes 
of  the  defeated.  Confidence  in  the  everlasting 
worth  for  God  of  those  who  have  been  unsuccess- 
ful here  can  be  created  nowhere  except  in  the 
atmosphere  of  Christ's  ministry.  The  weary  and 
the  heavy-laden  want  rest  in  the  Divine  sympa- 
thies of  Jesus,  and  his  name  will  renew  courage 
under  the  most  crushing  defeat,  and  rekindle  hope 
on  the  very  boundaries  of  the  outer  darkness. 

The  forgiveness  of  sins  is  only  the  beginning 
of  the  higher  life,  but  it  is  the  beginning.  The 
message  of  the  preacher  sounds  in  the  ears  of 


278      CHBIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

thousands  who  have  long  since  abandoned  all 
tliought  of  the  perfect  life,  who  have  surrendered 
their  ideals  as  foolish  fictions,  and  who  live  in 
the  far  country  in  moral  famine  and  inward 
disgrace.  The  moralism  of  Christianity  has  ab- 
solutely no  meaning  for  these  multitudes,  any 
more  than  the  sky  has  for  a  caged  eagle.  The 
sight  of  it  awakens  mysterious  reminiscences  and 
momentary  hopes,  but  the  fixed  mood  is  one  of 
indifference.  That  magnificence  is  for  the  for- 
tunate and  not  the  unfortunate,  for  the  free  and 
not  the  imprisoned.  The  suffering  and  hardened 
and  indifferent  world  waits  for  a  broken  heart  in 
the  presence  of  the  Eternal  pity  in  Christ.  The 
primary  want  is  the  dissolving  of  the  soul  in  a 
sea  of  regret  and  grief  over  the  beauty  of  the 
Lord  made  real  in  the  Master.  The  moral  ideal 
will  never  rise  upon  these  multitudes  until  it  rises 
out  of  this  sea  of  penitential  feeling,  like  the 
sun  out  of  a  troubled  ocean.  Nothing  but  the 
fires  of  such  sorrow  and  love  can  melt  the  chains 
of  evil  habit,  consume  the  force  of  earthly  incli- 
nation, and  burn  up  utterly  the  vast  psychic  accu- 
mulation of  a  soul  alienated  from  the  true  order 
and  divine  law  of  its  life.  Passion  led  astray, 
and  passion  must  recover  to  righteousness.  Only 
the  fury  of  love  can  avail  for  those  within  the 
prison  of  moral  despair.  The  Pentecostal  move- 
ment was  of  this  character.  The  apostolic  church 
began  in  immortal  regret  and  love.     The  masses 


DIVINE  COMPASSION.  279 

had  long  abandoned  all  faith  in  the  higher  life ; 
ethical  standards  had  been  adjusted  to  human 
infirmities,  and  obligations  had  been  met  with 
imbecilities.  There  must  be  a  movement  of 
thought  resulting  in  a  permanent  and  mighty 
passion  of  sorrow  and  hope ;  otherwise  the  apos- 
tolic church  cannot  begin.  This  was  the  feat 
accomplished  by  Peter's  sermon,  and  its  power 
depended  upon  its  assurance  of  forgiveness  and 
Divine  pity  in  the  Lord. 

It  seems  humiliating  to  set  a  grown  man  who 
cannot  read  his  own  lano"uao:e  to  the  task  of  learn- 
ing  the  alphabet.  But  there  is  no  other  way  to 
the  desired  attainment.  Preachers  are  often  both 
fastidious  and  impatient;  they  scorn  the  view  of 
hmnan  nature  which  considers  it  primarily  in 
need  of  the  Divine  compassion,  and  they  hate  to 
linger  so  long  upon  what  seems  the  mere  intro- 
duction to  the  Christian  life.  But  there  is  the 
world  in  its  confirmed  consciousness  of  moral 
defeat.  Nothing  but  the  tenderness  and  benig- 
nity that  awoke  the  poor  thief  on  the  cross  from 
his  lifelong  delusion,  that  rolled  away  the  thick 
cloud  of  his  doubt,  that  fixed  his  sane  mind  upon 
the  immutable  reality  of  the  Divine  world,  and 
that  drew  from  his  inmost  heart  the  great  and 
confident  request,  "Jesus,  remember  me  when 
thou  comest  in  thy  kingdom,"  can  avail  for  the 
general  need  of  mankind  to-day.  The  pulpit 
that  disowns  this  message  is  not  the  pulpit  for 


280      CHRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

humanity.  It  is  tlie  organ  of  a  class,  a  sect,  an 
aristocracy ;  it  ,is  not  the  voice  of  God  for  the 
million.  And  what  is  wanted  to-day  more  than 
anything  else  is  a  Christianity  for  the  nation. 
Elect  individuals  and  households  may  go  on  to 
perfection ;  the  people  need  repentance  and  faith. 
National  penitence  must  precede  faith  in  the  pos- 
sibility of  national  righteousness.  Unprecedented 
material  success  has  laid  the  life  of  the  people 
under  the  consciousness  of  moral  failure.  Mul- 
titudes believe  that  morality  constitutes  no  essen- 
tial part  of  human  life,  simply  because  they  have 
lost  sight  of  it  in  the  world,  and  can  see  no  room 
for  it  in  the  struggle  for  business  existence. 
When  the  moral  consciousness  has,  for  any  rea- 
son, gone  to  wreck,  its  recovery  is  the  first  task 
of  the  preacher.  And  the  elemental  powers  of 
the  moral  world,  the  forces  creative  of  insight 
and  love  and  hope,  are  the  sympathies  of  the  Lord 
Jesus.  His  place  must  be  supreme  in  the  pulpit 
of  to-day,  because  only  his  divine  humanity  can 
recover  from  wreck  the  moral  consciousness  of 
the  people;  only  his  effulgent  compassions  can 
reveal  the  Eternal  beauty  and  reanimate  the 
lives  that  have  long  been  dead ;  only  his  gracious 
pity  can  win  again  to  hope  and  to  fresh  and 
undiscourageable  effort  the  multitudes  that  seem 
to  themselves  elected  to  everlasting  despair.  The 
author  of  the  fifty-first  Psalm,  whoever  he  was 
and  whatever  may  have  been  the  form  of  his  sin, 


NATIONAL  EEPENTANCE.  281 

voices  by  anticipation  the  need  of  mankind: 
"Wash  me  and  I  shall  be  whiter  than  snow."^ 
A  moral  bath  is  the  world's  first  necessity;  a 
soaking  in  the  sea  of  penitential  feeling;  the 
cleansing  and  renewal  of  life  that  can  come  only 
out  of  the  depths  of  regret  and  hope,  and  the 
conscience  and  heart  dissolved  in  high  emotion 
and  transformed  into  a  sublime  passion.  The 
message  of  the  Absolute  pity  in  Jesus  Christ  is 
the  supreme  instrument  to  this  end.  "For  as, 
when  the  likeness  painted  on  a  panel  has  been 
effaced  by  stains  from  without,  he  whose  likeness 
it  is  must  needs  come  once  more  to  enable  the 
portrait  to  be  renewed  on  the  same  wood ;  for,  for 
the  sake  of  his  picture,  even  the  mere  wood  on 
which  it  is  painted  is  not  thrown  away,  but  the 
outline  is  renewed  upon  it :  in  the  same  way,  also, 
the  most  holy  Son  of  the  Father,  being  the  Image 
of  the  Father,  came  to  our  region  to  renew  man 
once  made  in  his  likeness,  and  find  him  as  one 
lost,  by  the  remission  of  sins."^  And  the  su- 
preme difficulty  of  the  times  is  not  faced  until 
the  preacher  confronts  the  need  of  national  re- 
pentance, and  the  origin  of  moral  life  for  the 
body  of  the  people.  Class -preaching  is  fatal  if 
accepted  without  protest  and  as  a  finality.  The 
message  of  Jesus  is  for  the  nation,  and  the 
preacher   must   not   fear   to    match   the    gospel 

1  Psalm  li.  7. 

2  Atlianasius,  The  Incarnation,  ch.  xix.  1,  2. 


282      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

aaralnst  tlie  most  inveterate  mood  of  the  time, — ■ 
national  indifference  to  the  ideal.  And  here, 
again,  Athanasius  has  a  timely  word  for  the 
Christian  minister:  "Just  as  a  noble  wrestler, 
great  in  skill  and  courage,  does  not  pick  out  his 
antagonists  for  himself,  lest  he  should  raise  a 
suspicion  of  his  being  afraid  of  some  of  them, 
but  puts  it  in  the  choice  of  the  onlookers,  and 
especially  so  if  they  happen  to  be  his  enemies,  so 
that,  against  whomsoever  they  match  him,  him  he 
may  throw,  and  be  believed  superior  to  them  all; 
so,  also,  the  Life  of  all,  our  Lord  and  Saviour, 
even  Christ,  did  not  devise  a  death  for  his  own 
body,  so  as  not  to  appear  to  be  fearing  some 
other  death,  but  he  accepted  on  the  cross,  and 
endured,  a  death  inflicted  by  others,  and  above 
all  by  his  enemies,  which  they  thought  dreadful 
and  ignominious  and  not  to  be  faced,  so  that,  this 
also  being  destroyed,  both  he  himself  might  be 
believed  to  be  the  Life,  and  the  power  of  death 
be  brought  utterly  to  nought."^  Christianity 
was  at  the  first,  and  in  the  highest  sense,  a  popu- 
lar religion;  and  if  it  is  to  continue  to  be  the 
religion  of  the  nation  and  mankind,  its  preachers 
must  return  to  the  elemental  power  of  the  pity  of 
God  in  Jesus  Christ. 

^  The  Incarnation,  xxiv.  1,  2,  3. 


REVELATION  AND  HISTORY.  283 

III. 

Passing  now  from  preliminaries  to  the  discus- 
sion proper,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  there  is  one 
marked  tendency  of  the  time  that  favors  this 
devout  return  to  Christ  on  the  part  of  the 
preacher.  History  is  counting  for  more  every 
day  among  our  representative  scholars.  The 
ideal  world  is  great;  so,  also,  is  the  field  of  its 
manifestation,  —  space  and  time.  Events,  facts, 
circumstances,  persons,  national  movements,  are 
the  forms  through  which  the  Divine  world  affirms 
its  reality.  And  the  two  belong  together,  at 
least  as  far  as  man  is  concerned.  The  idea  can- 
not be  understood  except  in  the  light  of  its  his- 
tory, and  the  disregard  of  the  forms  of  time  and 
circumstance,  place  and  personality,  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  idea,  is  a  sin  against  it,  no  less  than 
disrespect  to  the  need  of  humanity.  Whether 
Hegel  is  justly  responsible  for  the  habit  of  mind 
that  treats  history  as  the  mere  husk  of  thought, 
it  would  not  be  safe  to  say;  but  certainly  the 
schools  that  have  drawn  their  inspiration  from 
him  have  done  despite  to  the  rich  course  of 
events.  This  is  notably  the  attitude  of  the  Eng- 
lish Transcendental  school,  of  w^iose  principles 
the  works  of  the  late  Thomas  Hill  Green  are  the 
most  powerful  presentation.  This  school  has 
done  herculean  service  for  the  supremacy  of  a 
spiritual  interpretation  of  the  universe  and  man's 


284      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

life;  it  lias  dealt  a  philosophic  death-blow  to  sen- 
sationalism, with  its  whole  brood  of  metaphysical 
imbecilities,  in  its  consummate  Humian  form,  and 
in  many  ways  and  in  magnificent  measure  rescued 
British  speculation  from  implicit  atheism,  and 
enriched  it  with  the  greater  thoughts  of  other 
nations.  Still  it  is  by  no  means  free  from  trans- 
gression of  the  law  of  God,  and  one  of  its  sins 
is  its  undervaluation  of  history.  In  his  noble 
little  book,  "The  Witness  of  God,"  Professor 
Green  defines  God  as  an  act  of  eternal  sacrifice, 
and  Christ  as  the  reproduction  of  that  act  in 
time.  This  Christ  he  does  not  identify  with 
Jesus  of  Nazareth;  the  ideal  is  suggested,  won- 
drously  suggested,  by  his  history,  but  is  not  to 
be  confounded  with  it.  The  essence  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith  is  an  act  of  death  to  sin,  and  of  life  to 
holiness.  The  historical  is  but  incidental,  and 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  eternal  force  of  the 
truth.  Death,  resurrection,  and  ascension  are 
forms  for  the  Christ  ideal,  and  the  evangelical 
tradition  empties  its  total  meaning  into  a  supreme 
ethical  conception.  ^     This  habit  of  mind  cannot 

^  Witness  of  God.  Idealism  at  the  expense  of  history,  —  that 
is  the  sin  of  this  and  numberless  other  productions  from  the 
same  school.  One  wants  to  recall  these  thinkers  to  the  witness 
of  God  in  fact.  The  undervaluation  of  the  temporal  may  amount 
to  blasphemy  against  the  Eternal.  At  all  events,  temporal  and 
eternal  are  here  in  a  sacramental  union,  and  the  separation  of 
either  from  the  other  is  despite  done  to  the  genius  of  philosophy, 
no  less  than  the  spirit  of  religion. 


FAITH  AND  FACT.  285 

prevail;  the  course  of  events  and  tlie  richness 
and  robustness  of  fact  are  too  mighty  for  it. 
Long  ago  the  reaction  set  in,  and  history  is 
regarded  as  insej)arable  from  its  embodied  idea. 
In  the  interest  of  faith,  scholars  have  explored 
the  history  of  faith;  in  homage  to  ideas,  thinkers 
have  traced  the  growth  of  ideas.  And  just  as 
we  associate  the  stars  with  night,  —  wdth  night  in 
the  deepening  twilight,  in  the  progress  up  to  her 
sable  meridian,  and  in  the  gradual  lifting  of 
her  vast  shadow,  —  so  we  are  coming  to  asso- 
ciate permanently,  inevitably,  ideas  and  their 
great  historic  setting,  particular  truths  and  their 
epochal  manifestation,  the  energies  of  the  world 
of  thought  and  the  arena  of  their  victorious  ex- 
pression. The  historic  spirit  is  ever  the  best  ally 
of  the  intellectual  spirit ;  and  while  history  makes 
possible  a  larger  abstraction  of  ideas,  and  enables 
the  scholar  who  is  at  the  same  time  a  thinker  to 
dispense  with  its  forms  and  devote  himseK  to 
the  building  of  the  temple  of  pure  and  absolute 
truth,  still  for  the  purposes  of  education  in  the 
individual  mind  and  among  men  at  large,  and  in 
the  interest  of  power,  the  permanent  association 
of  ideas  and  their  great  historic  expression  is  a 
habit  of  thought  that  all  wise  men  will  vie  with 
one  another  to  perpetuate.  Thus  it  comes  to 
pass  that  the  most  searching  scholarship  of  the 
asre,  that  which  finds  in  the  records  of  the  New 
Testament  the  largest  accidental  and  temporary 


286      CHBIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY, 

element,  nevertheless  shows  a  relation  between 
Christ  and  Christianity  more  organic,  indissolu- 
ble, and  absolute. 

This  intellectual  habit  o£  our  century  must  be 
regarded  as  of  the  utmost  importance  to  the 
preacher.  He  must  not,  even  if  he  has  a  well- 
defined  system  of  thought,  become  its  open  and 
constant  advocate;  least  of  all  must  he  stand 
forth  as  the  champion  of  a  finished  interpretation 
of  the  life  of  man.  The  work  is  not  completed; 
the  table  of  contents  is  before  us,  and  the  plan 
of  the  great  vital  discussion  is  already  fairly  well 
indicated;  but  several  important  chapters  yet 
remain  to  be  written,  and  beyond  what  is  written  it 
is  not  edifying  to  go.  The  preacher  must  be  able 
to  read  ideas  through  history ;  to  see  how  far  they 
receive  adequate  expression  in  a  given  section  of 
history;  to  keep  them  warm  and  human  and 
mighty  through  perpetual  alliance  with  the  intel- 
lectual passion,  the  moral  struggle,  and  the  noble 
sorrow  and  hope  of  mankind.  There  is  not  in 
all  this  foolish  world  anything  so  utterly  vain  as 
abstract  preaching,  the  presentation  of  ideas  to- 
tally disengaged  from  the  times  and  persons  in 
which  they  first  appeared,  the  discussion  of  moral 
truth  out  of  all  relation  to  the  souls  that  brousfht 
it  into  our  world.  It  will  be  seen  later  that 
there  is  a  fatal  philosophic  objection  to  the  ab- 
stract treatment  of  truth  when  regarded  as  other 
than  a  temporary  method  of  thought,  and  that 


GEE  AT  MEN  AND  PEOGBESS.  287 

the  heart  of  humanity  is  right  when  it  demands 
a  perpetual  association  between  substance  and 
form,  history  and  truth,  Christ  and  Christianity.^ 

IV. 

The  notion  that  accounts  for  human  progress 
as  due  to  the  agency  of  great  men  lends  its 
weighty  sanction  to  the  assertion  that  Christ 
should  stand  at  the  centre  of  all  preaching.  For 
the  believer  in  freedom,  for  the  man  who  cannot 
accept  the  wild  materialistic  generalization  that 
all  the  life  on  this  planet  is  in  the  last  analysis 
the  result  of  the  fashioning  sweep  of  cosmic 
forces,  human  progress  can  be  accounted  for  only 
as  it  is  seen  to  issue  from  the  ascendency  of  great 
men.  Great  men  are  the  mediators  of  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  power  of  God,  and  are  there- 
fore the  proximate  cause  of  the  evolution  of  man- 
kind.    Men  of  exalted  genius  are  more  than  the 

■^  It  is  remarkable  that  Dr.  Bushnell,  whose  studies  kept  him 
wholly  ignorant  of  Kant,  is  nevertheless  dealing  -with  Kant's 
problem  in  his  rather  diffuse  Dissertation  on  Language,  and  in 
his  far  clearer,  compaeter,  and  finer  production.  The  Gospel  a 
Gift  to  the  Imagination.  He  saw,  and  it  is  a  remarkable  wit- 
ness to  his  genius,  that  thought  is  inseparable  from  sense-forms, 
and  so-called  abstract  thinking  is  but  thought  with  the  sensuous 
accompaniment  attenuated  to  the  last  degree.  The  dialectic  of 
Plato  is  a  wonderful  exhibition  of  the  power  of  his  spirit  to  elim- 
inate all  but  the  slightest  shadoAv,  the  palest  image  of  sense,  from 
the  work  of  the  reason ;  but  when  he  tries  to  emancipate  him- 
self wholly  from  the  forms  of  this  world,  he  goes  off  into  no- 
where ;  and  abstract  preaching  follows  his  example,  without  at 
all  sharing  in  the  magnificence  of  his  movement. 


288      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

product  of  tlieir  time :  they  make  a  special  draft 
upon  eternity  on  tlieir  way  hither,  and  they  be- 
come upon  the  maturing  of  their  powers  the 
makers  of  their  time.  Originality  is  the  highest 
realization  of  freedom;  for  it  implies  the  truest 
insight  into  the  order  of  the  world,  material  and 
moral,  and  the  ability  to  keep  in  loyal  accord 
with  that.  What  is  perfect  freedom  if  it  be  not 
the  gift  of  perfect  discernment  and  the  power  of 
a  complete  obedience?  Originality  is,  then,  the 
maker  of  this  human  world  of  ours ;  and  the  new 
and  valid  insights  work  through  the  new  and 
mighty  personality.  The  advent  of  a  truly  great 
man  is,  as  it  were,  a  fresh  and  wiser  hand  upon 
the  helm  of  human  history.  In  accordance  with 
his  closer  observation  and  sounder  judgment,  he 
changes  the  course  of  human  progress.  The 
working  forces  are  with  us,  immanent  in  our  race ; 
but  the  great  man  comes,  puts  his  hand  to  the 
wheel,  and  steers  the  vast  self-moving  craft  in 
new  and  happier  directions.  Dim  and  nebulous 
as  the  personality  of  Moses  has  become,  the  most 
destructive  criticism  is  still  confident  that  in  the 
splendor  of  his  genius  and  the  force  of  his  char- 
acter Hebrew  nationalism  had  its  origin.  It  is 
easy  to  see  how  the  history  of  the  people  of  Israel 
is  the  history  of  their  great  men.  Moses,  David, 
Elijah,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  the  unknown  i^ro- 
phet  of  the  exile  mark  the  successive  ap23earance 
of  new  ideal  forces  working  through  extraordi- 
nary personalities. 


EVOLUTION  IN  HISTORY.  289 

Wherever  we  turn,  the  same  view  of  human 
progress  is  supported.  Luther  gave  a  new  direc- 
tion to  the  subsequent  development  of  European 
life ;  he  was  the  master  of  his  age,  and  turned  its 
best  forces  to  fresh  and  momentous  expression. 
To  write  the  history  of  the  Reformation  and 
leave  Luther  out  of  the  account  is  not  possible. 
Granted  that  great  ideas  were  concerned  with 
the  movement,  —  the  recovered  faith  in  the  direct 
access  of  the  individual  soul  to  God,  the  rights 
of  scholarship  and  reason,  the  fresh  impulses  of 
a  young  but  growing  nationalism,  —  still  these 
ideas  were  centred  in  the  strongest  personality 
of  the  time,  and  through  that  dauntless  manhood 
were  wielded  with  elemental  energy  upon  the 
imagination  and  heart  of  Europe.  Luther  is  but 
a  conspicuous  example  of  the  general  method  of 
historical  evolution.  There  are  in  our  own  annals 
two  great  names,  without  which  we  could  not  in 
the  least  understand  our  history,  and  without 
which,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  that  history  itself 
could  not  have  been  what  it  is.  But  for  the  large 
sagacity,  the  exalted  patriotism,  the  unerring 
tact,  the  statuesque  character,  and  the  majestic 
personality  of  its  first  President,  —  a  personality 
that  had  the  power  to  create  and  sustain  an  ever- 
widening  enthusiasm  for  itself, — this  country 
would  have  perished  in  its  cradle.  The  same 
thing  may  be  said  with  equal  truth  of  Abraham 
Lincoln.     He  was  the  master  of  his  generation. 


290      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

He  understood  the  sentiment  of  the  North  and 
the  logic  of  slavery;  he  measured,  as  no  other 
mind  did,  the  forces  of  hostility  to  the  Union  and 
of  friendship  for  it;  he  knew  when  to  move  and 
when  to  arrest  his  steps.  He  was  well  aware 
that  he  was  dependent  for  success  upon  the  loy- 
alty of  his  fellow-citizens;  he  spoke  the  right 
word  at  the  right  time,  and  waited  long  enough, 
but  never  too  long,  for  the  development  of  patri- 
otic support.  He  set  before  himself  the  highest 
end, — the  union  and  honor  of  his  country;  he 
had  to  reach  that  end  through  war  and  the  de- 
feat of  half  the  people  and  financial  disaster  to 
many  parts  of  the  country.  He  had  for  his  power 
of  accomplishment  the  forces  in  the  national 
heart  and  the  power  of  the  public  credit.  These 
he  understood,  developed,  and  wielded  as  no 
other  man  of  his  time  did  or  could.  Lincoln  was 
an  epochal  man,  and  he  turned  the  stream  of 
our  national  life  in  new  and  unexpected  direc- 
tions. The  war  was  fought  by  the  power  of  an 
idea,  —  American  nationalism.  The  greatest  in- 
tellectual representative  of  that  idea  was  Daniel 
Webster;  but  the  greatest  political  advocate  of 
it,  the  wisest  and  most  powerful  administrator 
in  its  behalf,  was  Abraham  Lincoln.  The  ideas 
upon  which  the  country  was  founded  were  again 
blended  in  a  great  personality,  and  their  power 
once  more  became  living  and  revolutionary.  The 
lesson  that  lies  upon  the  surface  of  our  own  his- 


PERSONALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY.         291 

tory  is  the  lesson  of  all  history.  Pericles  in  Ath- 
ens, Caesar  in  Rome,  Charlemagne  in  Mediaeval 
Europe,  Cromwell  in  England,  Knox  in  Scotland, 
and  Napoleon  in  France,  all  are  epoch-making  men 
in  the  history  of  human  affairs.  The  contention 
is  that  the  great  idea  is  blended  with  the  great 
personality,  that  truth  and  manhood  work  to- 
gether with  controlling  power. 

Even  in  the  region  of  philosophy,  where  it  is 
usually  considered  that  ideas  count  for  every- 
thing and  personality  for  nothing,  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  see  that  the  most  important  qualification 
must  be  made  to  such  a  statement.  The  person- 
ality of  Socrates,  both  in  the  traditions  that  have 
given  us  the  image  of  it  with  an  approach  to  the 
actual  man,  and  in  the  more  or  less  ideal  presen- 
tations of  Plato,  has  been  the  greatest  philosophic 
incentive  in  the  whole  history  of  human  specula- 
tion. From  physics  to  ethics,  from  nature  to  man, 
—  nature's  master, — was  the  courageous  creed 
of  the  great  Athenian;  a  creed  so  perfectly  ex- 
pressed in  the  entire  habit  of  the  man  that  the 
personality  rather  than  the  philosopher  has  sur- 
vived. And,  if  we  take  for  another  example  a 
character  at  the  farthest  remove  from  Socrates, 
we  can  still  discern  the  force  of  personality  in 
philosophy.  Probably  no  thinker  ever  made  less 
of  personality  than  Aristotle.  The  subject  under 
discussion,  the  right  method  in  the  movement 
upon  it,  and  the  attainment  of  the  exact  and  cer- 


292      CHBIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

tain  truth,  —  these  seem  to  be  his  sole  aim  and 
interest;  and  it  is  supposed  that  his  unsurpassed 
influence  upon  human  thought  has  been  due  to 
the  vast  survey  that  he  took  o£  the  territories  of 
human  knowledge,  and  the  masses  of  valid  and 
final  thinking  contained  in  his  works.  These 
merits  are  certainly  his;  but  I  venture  the  sug- 
gestion that  the  main  and  permanent  power  of 
Aristotle  has  been  the  blending  of  these  high 
excellences  with  another  and  a  higher,  the  extraor- 
dinary character  of  the  mind  revealed  in  his 
works.  From  almost  any  single  work  of  this 
thinker  that  has  come  down  to  us,  it  would  be 
possible  to  construct  an  image  of  his  mind,  to 
write  a  description  of  his  intellect,  to  work  out 
a  psychology  of  the  man.  There  is  a  positive 
fascination  in  the  acuteness,  the  comprehensive- 
ness, and  the  fruitfulness  of  that  thinking  per- 
sonality, its  profound  and  eager  love  of  truth,  its 
great  sincerity,  its  steady  and  massive  earnest- 
ness, and  its  majestic  rational  force.  Again  the 
personality  of  the  philosopher  becomes  the  organ 
of  the  liberating  ideas,  and  these  owe  much  of 
their  persistence  and  charm  to  the  imperial  intel- 
lect that  must  ever  remain  in  association  with 
them. 

The  inference  from  all  this  is  plain.  The 
advent  of  Christianity  was  the  beginning  of  the 
greatest  revolution  in  human  history.  The  ideas 
of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood 


CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  293 

of  man,  tlie  conceptions  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
and  eternal  life,  the  whole  revelation  of  the  char- 
acter of  our  Maker  and  the  order  for  man  and 
society  brought  into  the  world  by  Jesus  Christ, 
cannot  be  separated  from  him.  He  is  his  reli- 
gion. He  accomplished  more  while  he  was  in 
the  world,  and  he  has  done  more  since  he  left  it, 
by  the  homage  that  his  character  has  won  from 
human  hearts,  than  by  the  power  of  any  single 
idea.  Precious  as  the  gospels  are,  the  sympa- 
thetic reader  is  soon  able  to  see  that  Christ  is 
infinitely  greater.  They  are  but  broken  lights, 
and  he  is  ever  more  than  they.  His  power  is 
seen  in  the  manner  in  which  he  evoked  the  oppo- 
sition of  his  time,  in  the  way  in  which  he  concen- 
trated it  upon  himself.  It  w^as  his  personal 
powder  that  opened  the  infernal  depths  in  the 
hearts  of  Pharisee  and  Saducee,  in  priest  and 
scribe,  that  drew  out  the  latent  and  deadly  poison 
in  his  countrymen.  " Criticism,"  it  has  been  said, 
"is  a  kind  of  homage,"  and  the  power  to  madden 
the  hypocrite  and  the  knave,  to  gather  into  one 
huge  black  cloud  the  ignorance  and  the  perver- 
sity of  many  generations,  and  to  draw  it  upon 
one's  self,  is  an  unmistakable  sign  of  the  highest 
endowment ;  as  it  is  only  the  lofty  mountain  that 
can  collect  upon  itself  the  impurities  of  wdde- 
extending  expanses  of  poisoned  atmosphere,  and 
open  upon  its  own  head  the  terrible  but  cleansing 
storm. 


294      CHRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

We  must  think,  also,  of  the  homage  that 
Christ  drew  upon  himself,  —  the  love  that  he  re- 
ceived, the  inspiration  that  he  communicated,  the 
consolation  that  he  imparted,  the  heroism  that 
he  created  in  the  men  and  women  who  best  knew 
him.  This  has  been  the  chief  line  of  his  power 
over  subsequent  times.  Under  the  shadow  of 
his  great  and  gracious  personality,  men  have 
abandoned  their  guilty  loves,  and  turned  toward 
righteousness  with  unappeasable  longing.  The 
fires  that  he  has  kindled  have  burned  down  the 
structures  of  evil  habit;  and  forces  mediated  by 
the  sense  of  his  presence  have  brought  into  exist- 
ence the  richest,  the  most  various,  and  the  fairest 
types  of  human  character.  In  the  mystic  sense 
of  companionship  with  him,  millions  have  strug- 
gled to  do  their  duty,  looking  to  God,  and  not 
to  man,  for  duty's  holy  and  sure  reward.  And 
as  civilization  springs  out  of  the  emotions  and 
habits  of  the  people,  —  as  it  is  but  the  life  artic- 
ulated that  surges  in  a  boundless  sea  of  feeling, 
instinct,  intuition,  and  moral  custom  in  the  popu- 
lar heart,  —  so  Christ's  control  of  the  sources  of 
life  in  the  Western  world  proclaims  him  the  great- 
est force  in  the  progress  that  this  portion  of  our 
race  has  achieved.  It  is  a  fact  like  this  that, 
entirely  apart  from  all  theological  considerations, 
opens  one's  eyes  to  the  unmeasured  power  of  the 
person  of  Christ,  that  makes  one  regret  the  j)oor 
use  of  it  that  one  has  hitherto  made,  that  rebukes 


THE  PREACHER'S  IDEAL.  295 

one's  stupidity  in  failing  to  discern  the  Divine 
Presence  that  has  penetrated  our  whole  civiliza- 
tion with  its  truth  and  grace. 

V. 

Psychological  considerations  make  it  plain  that 
the  utmost  emphasis  should  be  placed  upon  the 
Person  of  Christ.  The  reproduction  of  his  life 
in  the  life  of  mankind  would  mean  for  it  the 
highest  conceivable  worth  and  happiness.  The 
ideal  fits  the  soul,  and  lays  imagination  under 
the  largest  and  holiest  spell.  For  those  who 
make  it  their  business  to  institute  a  new  mind  in 
human  beings,  there  cannot  be  a  moment's  hesi- 
tation as  to  what  mind  shall  be  their  chosen 
standard.  Mind  must  be  subdued  to  mind,  and 
all  must  be  brought  under  captivity  to  Christ. 
And  it  cannot  be  said  too  often  that  the  trans- 
fusion of  one  mind  through  another  is  a  much 
more  hopeful  undertaking  than  the  enthrone- 
ment of  abstract  ideas,  and  their  investment  with 
authority  over  the  fountains  of  passion  and  the 
sources  of  activity.  What  is  the  highest  ambi- 
tion of  the  true  preacher?  Does  he  not  believe 
that  it  is  possible  for  his  moral  consciousness  to 
reproduce  itself  in  the  hearts  of  his  j)eople,  so 
that  the  better  mind  that  is  in  him  shall  take 
possession  of  them?  Is  he  not  confident  that  a 
noble  man  with  the  gift  of  utterance,  one  who  is 
true  to  the  soul  of  things,  and  in  inspired  accord 


296      CHBIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF   TO-DAY. 

with  it,  and  armed  with  its  holy  sympathies,  and 
filled  with  its  resistless  persuasions,  can  put  him- 
self into  the  mind  of  a  thousand?  Is  not  this 
the  loftiest  ambition  that  can  enter  the  human 
breast,  —  not  indeed  to  cram  the  hearer  with  a 
given  order  of  theological  opinion,  to  set  over 
him  the  preacher's  system  of  belief,  to  strive  to 
make  him  willing  not  only  to  swear  allegiance 
for  himself  during  the  term  of  his  natural  life, 
but  also  to  serve  upon  him  a  requisition  that  he 
shall  coerce  his  children  into  the  same  relation, 
and  to  count  every  man  an  uncircumcised  Philis- 
tine and  heathen  reprobate  who  refuses  to  ex- 
change freedom  for  bondage,  but  to  reproduce 
the  better  mind  that  by  the  grace  of  God  has 
taken  possession  of  the  preacher  in  the  thought 
and  life  of  a  thousand  souls  ?  This  is  the  power 
of  all  true  speech.  Demosthenes  strives  to  make 
his  mind  that  of  all  the  patriotic  Athenians  of 
his  day,  and  in  a  manner  he  succeeds.  The 
same  is  true  of  Cicero,  Chatham,  Burke,  and 
Webster.  The  whole  beneficent  movement  be- 
gins from  the  domination  of  the  inferior  mind  by 
the  superior,  of  the  ill-informed  and  weak  by 
the  well-informed  and  strong.  This  is  the  method 
of  moral  training  in  all  the  really  exalted  family 
life  of  which  we  have  any  record.  The  aim  has 
been,  not  to  tie  the  young  mind  to  a  given  circle 
of  opinions,  but  to  reproduce  in  it  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  father  or  mother,  as  that  has  been 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  EDUCATION.        297 

secured  by  faith,  sobered  by  reflection,  purified 
by  wisdom,  and  lifted  into  moral  energy  through 
its  accord  with  the  order  of  the  world  and  the 
best  sympathies  and  ideals  of  mankind.  The 
mind  of  Monica  was  victorious  over  Augustine, 
and  to  the  last  Carlyle  was  ruled,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  the  original  and  profoundly  religious 
spirit  of  his  mother.  It  was  the  intellectual  and 
moral  vigor  of  an  aunt  that  did  most  to  form 
the  youthful  mind  of  Emerson.  The  same  pro- 
cedure goes  on  in  the  schools  and  colleges  of  the 
land.  The  mental  gifts  of  the  teacher,  his  trained 
faculties  and  his  high  character  as  a  man,  do 
more  to  develop  the  intellect  and  form  the  spirit 
of  the  pupil  than  the  largest  mass  of  knowledge 
imparted.  Truth  has  power;  but  when  it  is  rep- 
resented in  the  masterful  mind,  and  in  a  large 
way  reflected  in  the  gentlemanly  feeling  and 
manly  character  of  the  teacher,  its  power  is  ten- 
fold. In  his  remarkable  address  at  the  Washing- 
ton Centennial  in  New  York  in  1889,  President 
Eliot  said  that  Washington's  fate  was  wellnigh 
incomparable,  because  of  the  incessant  transfu- 
sion of  his  great  mind  through  the  intellectual 
life  of  the  children  and  youth  and  manhood  of 
America.  That  certainly  lays  bare  the  great 
principle  of  true  education.  Ideas  are  not  the 
greatest  power  of  change  for  the  better,  but  a 
mind  full  of  ideal  forces. 

It  is  here  that  the  preaching  of  Christ  puts 


298      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

itself  in  accord  with  tlie  universal  method  of 
education.  The  best  mind  in  relation  to  God, 
and  the  deepest  and  noblest  in  relation  to  the  life 
of  the  soul  and  society,  is  the  mind  of  Christ. 
Christ  is  not  simply  great  thoughts,  but  these 
held  in  a  solution  of  divine  passion;  he  is  not 
merely  the  truth,  but  the  truth  in  terms  of  life. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  pedagogue,  the 
preaching  of  Christ  is  the  only  sane  procedure. 
An  extensive  and  noble  literature  has  come  into 
existence  during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century 
upon  the  question  as  to  the  best  method  of  reach- 
ing the  mind  of  childhood  and  youth,  upon  the 
modes  of  approach  that  are  easiest,  and  the  forms 
of  ap23eal  that  are  most  effectual  in  bringing 
under  cultivation  the  largest  extent  of  the  human 
brain.  The  want  of  education  has  come  to  mean 
that,  of  the  total  brain  capacity  in  a  given  indi- 
vidual, only  a  fractional  part  is  in  active  service. 
Education  is  something  more  and  deeper  than 
the  ability  to  read  and  write  and  reckon,  construe 
Greek  and  Latin  sentences,  and  hold  in  the 
memory  a  few  of  the  facts  of  history.  It  is  a 
question  of  the  development  of  the  total  brain 
capacity,  the  awakening  of  latent  powers,  the 
bringing  into  active  service  and  under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  will  the  entire  intellectual  possibility. 
Numberless  experiments  have  been  made,  all 
going  to  show  that  comparatively  few  nominally 
educated  persons  are  really  so;  that  vast  areas  of 


MISTAKEN  IDEAS,  299 

the  brain  are  inactive;  tliat  in  fact  tliey  have 
never  been  reached  by  any  adequate  stimukis; 
that  the  majority  o£  those  who  pass  for  men  and 
women  of  accomplishment  are  operating  the  busi- 
ness of  the  world,  studying  the  problems  of  so- 
ciety, and  measuring  the  character  of  the  ultimate 
realities,  with  but  a  fraction  of  their  possible 
power.  There  is,  it  is  believed,  among  the  old 
records  of  the  town  of  Boston,  an  order  to  this 
effect,  that  a  given  road  be  constructed  as  far  as 
Newton,  but  no  farther,  for  the  reason  that  it 
was  extremely  unlikely  that  a  highway  back  into 
the  wilderness  beyond  that  point  would  ever  be 
needed !  The  Pilgrims  and  Puritans  had  as  good 
a  right  to  think  that  they  had  brought  under  cul- 
tivation all  the  available  land  within  the  bounda- 
ries of  what  is  now  the  United  States  as  most 
educated  persons  have  for  supposing  that  their 
total  intellectual  capacity  is  engaged  in  the  con- 
duct of  life.  As  the  strip  of  land  on  the  Atlan- 
tic seaboard  occupied  by  the  colonies  was  to  the 
mighty  continent  beyond  it,  so  is  the  brain  power 
under  actual  development,  even  among  educated 
persons,  to  the  total  brain  capacity.  It  is  this 
discovery  that  is  the  foundation  of  the  new  edu- 
cation. To-day,  representative  teachers  are  very 
much  in  the  mood  of  Columbus  after  he  had 
made  his  first  voyage.  Something  rich  and  won- 
derful has  been  found.  Those  who  have  gone 
into  the  study  of  the  child  mind  most  deeply  are 


300      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-BAY. 

the  apostles  of  hope.  What  they  have  seen  they 
have  not  fully  explored,  but  they  are  sure  that 
they  have  looked  upon  a  new  jihase  of  the  Old 
World.  It  is  their  vision  of  the  enormous  latent 
brain  capacities  of  the  child  and  youth,  which 
are  but  superficially  touched  by  the  current  forms 
of  teaching,  that  makes  them  savage  in  their 
criticism.  Samson  did  not  know  his  strength 
until  the  young  lion  roared  against  him,  and 
similarly  these  latent  intellectual  powers  are  wait- 
ing for  the  forms  of  appeal  that  shall  awake  and 
bring  them  forth.  It  is  worth  while  for  Presi- 
dent G.  Stanley  Hall  to  give  himself  as  the  apostle 
of  the  new  education.  His  severe  and  thorough 
arraignment  of  methods  now  in  use  comes  not 
from  malice  for  the  teacher,  but  from  love  of  the 
child  and  youth.  He  sees,  as  few  in  our  genera- 
tion see,  the  vast  areas  of  brain  substance  that,  in 
the  overwhelming  majority  of  persons,  lie  fallow. 
He  sees  men  lifting  the  burdens  of  life  with  a 
single  finger  when  their  Maker  has  provided  them 
a  full  hand,  and  driving  the  supports  upon  which 
they  are  to  found  their  homes  with  a  bare  fist 
when  they  might  employ  a  trip-hammer. 

The  new  education,  which  has  certainly  come 
to  stay,  has  in  this  discussion  a  profound  signifi- 
cance. It  means  for  the  preacher  a  revelation  of 
the  moral  powers  that  are  dependent  for  their 
evolution  upon  the  development  of  certain  areas 
of  the  brain.     There  is  everything  to  hope  for 


THE  NEW  EDUCATION.  301 

in  the  way  of  the  evokition  of  moral  power  and 
magnificent  character,  if  certain  sections  of  the 
brain  can  be  brought  into  full  and  predominating 
activity;  and  there  is  nothing  but  discouragement 
before  the  preacher  who  fails  to  reach  these  cen- 
tres of  the  higher  energy.  God  made  men  up- 
right, but  they  have  found  out  many  inventions. 
There  are  sources  of  power  in  humanity  to-day 
sufficient  for  the  moral  transformation  of  society, 
if  only  the  slumbering  energy  could  be  roused 
and  called  into  active  service.  Those  who  see 
the  facts  stand  aghast  over  the  continued  waste 
of  manhood,  over  the  stupid  postponement  of  a 
millennium  that  might  be  indefinitely  hastened 
in  its  coming.  The  men  who  are  in  this  great 
study,  and  who  at  first  were  tempted  by  material- 
ism, have  been  converted  by  it  into  the  profound- 
est  spiritual  beliefs.  Nothing  can  properly  edu- 
cate man,  so  it  is  held  by  these  students,  but  the 
appeal  of  the  Infinite  which  is  revelation,  —  but 
the  response  to  the  Infinite  which  is  religion. 
The  highest  form  of  revelation  is,  of  course,  the 
highest  form  of  appeal,  and  the  mightiest  reli- 
gious experience  is  the  fullest  development  of  the 
spiritual  capacity  of  man.  All  modes  of  educa- 
tional stimulus  must  terminate  in  the  stimulus 
which  only  the  Infinite  can  supply;  and  all  re- 
sponses to  the  teacher's  art  that  stop  short  of  the 
response  to  God  are  superficial,  —  the  merest 
ripples   on   the    surface   of    the   lake    measured 


802      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

against  its  total  unbroken  depth.  The  genuine 
preacher  will  not  be  slow  to  see  the  bearing  of 
all  this  upon  his  calling.  It  will  make  him  ask, 
What  is  the  supreme  revelation  of  the  Infinite, 
what  is  the  highest  form  of  his  appeal?  His 
whole  procedure  will  fall  under  condemnation 
unless  he  is  either  a  perfect  man  or  a  fool.  The 
blundering  approaches  to  the  mind  of  his  people 
that  he  has  been  making,  he  will  now  see,  could 
have  been  rewarded  with  no  other  result  than 
indifference.  The  superficial  religiousness  he 
will  understand  as  consequent  upon  the  superfi- 
cial appeal,  and  the  absence  of  moral  power  and 
influence  in  his  church  he  will  explain  by  the 
fact  that  the  sources  of  spiritual  energy  in  the 
brain  and  heart  of  his  congregation  have  not  been 
opened.  Christ,  and  the  preaching  of  Christ, 
will  become  for  him  once  more  the  Divine  mes- 
sage, and  he  will  resolve  to  use  this  sovereign 
revelation  and  appeal  of  the  Infinite  in  a  way  to 
call  forth  something  like  the  total  answer  of  the 
soul.  To  seek  for  the  reproduction  of  Christ's 
mind  in  the  mind  of  the  community  is  the 
greatest  aim  that  one  can  cherish;  to  present 
him  as  the  appeal  of  God  to  the  brain  substance 
and  soul-force  of  the  individual  is  certain  to  be 
honored  by  a  mighty  response.  In  deep  respect 
for  the  constitution  of  man,  in  entire  accord  with 
the  new  education,  and  in  league  with  the  whole 
loo^ic  of  living-,  the  total  endeavor  of  the  modern 


THE  MIND  OF  CHRIST.  303 

pulpit  sliould  have  for  its  motto,  "Have  this 
mind  in  you  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus."  ^ 
In  the  two  fundamental  aspects  of  content  and 
character,  that  mind  is  confessedly  without  a 
parallel.  "The  absence  from  the  biography  of 
Christ  of  any  doctrines  which  the  subsequent 
growth  of  human  knowledge,  whether  in  natural 
science,  ethics,  political  economy,  or  elsewhere 
has  had  to  discount  "  is  indeed  remarkable. 
"For  when  we  consider  what  a  large  number  of 
sayings  are  recorded  of  or  attributed  to  him,  it 
becomes  most  remarkable  that  in  literal  truth 
there  is  no  reason  why  any  of  his  words  should 
ever  pass  away  in  the  sense  of  becoming  obsolete. 
Contrast  Jesus  Christ  in  this  respect  with  other 
thinkers  of  like  antiquity.  Even  Plato  ...  is 
nowhere  in  this  respect  compared  with  him. 
Read  the  dialogues  and  see  how  enormous  is  the 
contrast  with  the  gospels  in  respect  of  errors  of 
all  kinds,  reaching  even  to  absurdity  in  respect 

1  Phil.  ii.  5.  The  New  Education  has  a  messag-e  for  the  min- 
istry of  priceless  value.  It  discovers  the  law  of  mental  and 
moral  development  in  a  wonderfully  fresh  and  vital  way;  it 
gives  new  insig'hts  into  the  marvelous  capacities  of  the  human 
soul ;  and  it  begets  the  conviction  that  in  orig-inal  endowment 
there  is  not  so  g'reat  a  difference  among  mankind,  rather  that 
the  highest  gifts  are  far  more  widely  diffused  than  is  commonly 
supposed;  and  it  indicates  the  reality  of  the  objects  of  re- 
ligion by  showing  their  necessity  for  anything  like  the  total 
education  of  man.  Revelation  as  the  appeal  of  the  Infinite  to 
the  soul,  and  religion  as  the  response  of  the  soul  to  the  Lifi.nite, 
acquire  an  august  meaning  in  the  light  of  this  new  study. 


304      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

of  reason,  and  to  sayings  shocking  to  the  moral 
sense."  ^  Siipplement  this  impressive  negative 
with  the  positive  transcendence  of  the  teaching 
of  Jesns,  and  add  to  the  divine  content  the  char- 
acter of  that  mind,  its  inapproachable  grace  and 
power,  and  the  aim  of  all  inspired  and  inspiring 
preaching  is  unmistakable. 

VI. 

This  discussion  has  now  arrived  at  its  most 
important  stage.  If  Christ  should  be  supreme 
in  the  modern  pulpit,  there  must  be  a  discoverable 
philosophical  ground  for  that  supremacy.  A  clear 
sense  of  the  validity  of  that  ground  must  have  a 
profound  influence  upon  the  methods  of  the 
preacher,  must  make  him  conscious  that  in  preach- 
ing Christ  he  is  in  accord  with  the  deepest  nature 
of  things.  Now  the  philosophical  basis  of  the 
claim  that  the  Master  should  be  the  final  form  of 
the  preacher's  message  is  that  the  ultimate  real- 
ity in  the  universe  is  the  personality  of  God,  and 
that  only  personality  can  mediate  personality. 
Science  deals  with  the  universe  as  it  falls  within 
the  fields  of  time  and  space.  She  is  true  to  her 
calling  in  laying  the  utmost  weight  upon  the 
system  of  laws  according  to  which  things  within 
the  sphere  of  sensation  behave.  Philosoj)hy  seeks 
for  the  unity  of  the  moral  world  of  man  and 
the    material   world   of   science,    in   the   reality 

1  Thoughts  on  Religion,  pp.  157,  158. 


THE   UNIVERSE  AS  PERSONAL.  305 

wliicli,  while  manifested  in  both,  lies  behind 
them  as  their  ground  and  cause;  and  theistic 
religion  goes  a  step  further,  gathers  the  universe 
into  a  personal  life,  regards  all  things  as  in  some 
sense  expressions  of  an  Infinite  Will,  fastens 
upon  the  soul  of  man  as  in  the  creative  process 
lifted  into  permanent  moral  relations  with  its 
Maker,  a  divinely  ordained  communicant  in  the 
thought  and  love  and  life  of  the  Father  of  all. 

The  Christian  faith  is  grounded  in  the  philoso- 
phy that  sums  up  the  universe  in  the  personality 
of  God.  And  if  man  is  allowed  to  interpret  the 
universe  at  all,  it  does  seem  that  the  personal 
way  is  the  inevitable  way.  Sure  of  spirit  within, 
we  may  advance  with  Berkeley,  and  read  out  of 
the  whole  sensuous  appeal  the  ordaining  mind  of 
God.  Asking  the  reason  for  the  sensational  stim- 
ulus that  is  ever  flowing  in  upon  us,  awakening 
and  feeding  the  intellect,  furnishing  the  mental 
bricks  out  of  which  the  fair  structure  of  know- 
ledge is  built,  and  knowing  that  only  mind  can 
furnish  mind,  we  may  assume  at  once  that  what 
we  misname  matter  is  but  the  vital  presence  of 
God.  Or,  accepting  from  Mr.  Sj)encer  the  decla- 
ration that  our  notion  of  power  is  born  from 
within,  that  we  could  not  understand  the  push  of 
things  against  us  were  it  not  for  the  prior  push 
of  our  life  against  them,  we  may  go  on  to  affirm 
that,  since  the  only  power  that  we  know  anything 
about  is  spiritual,  if  we  are  to  interpret  the  force 


806      CHRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

tliat  is  operating  upon  us  in  tlie  regions  of  sense, 
in  the  contemporaneous  life  of  the  race  and 
through  the  courses  of  history,  if  we  are  not  to 
stand  dumb  in  its  presence,  we  must  say  that  we 
are  face  to  face  with  God.  Or  we  may  take  the 
path  of  Lotze  and  construe  the  universe  with  the 
personality  of  man  as  our  guide  and  interpreter. 
In  the  last  analysis  reality  lies  in  personality, 
and  the  whole  realm  of  things  must  be  centred 
in  the  will  and  conscience  of  our  Maker.  The 
power  that  rolls  in  the  sea,  that  shines  in  suns 
and  stars,  that  stands  fast  in  the  mountain,  that 
utters  its  grace  in  the  flower,  that  breaks  into 
melody  in  the  note  of  the  bird,  and  that  sweeps 
round  man  as  physical  environing  force,  is  the 
power  of  the  Infinite  Will.  The  might  that  rises 
through  the  instincts  of  the  heart,  that  flashes  in 
the  intuitions  of  genius,  that  gives  volume  and 
richness  to  social  life,  that  emerges  in  the  insti- 
tutions and  literatures  and  arts  of  the  race,  is 
again  the  might  of  the  Supreme  Person.  The 
ultimate  centre  of  all  the  force  that  shapes  from 
within,  and  all  the  energy  that  stimulates  from 
without,  is  the  personal  being  of  God.  This  is 
the  eternal  reality  of  the  universe.  What  we 
call  things  are  but  the  various  and  transient 
processions  of  the  Infinite  Personal  Soul;  what 
we  call  animal  life  is  but  the  Divine  differentiated 
into  temporary,  semi-independent  existence ;  what 
we  call  man  is  but  the  primal  personality  uttered 


REALITY  AND   THOUGHT.  307 

in  terms  of  its  own  highest  being,  the  finite  lifted 
into  the  image  of  the  Infinite,  and  ordained  to 
perpetual  fellowship  with  him.  If  we  are  reli- 
gious men,  every  path  of  intellectual  advance  must 
end  in  the  personality  of  God.  To  the  religious 
mind  this  universe  is  not  merely  a  system  of  laws, 
and  an  infinite  force  acting  in  accordance  with 
them;  nor  is  it  an  impersonal  idea  evolving  its 
hidden  richness  into  the  explicitness  of  concrete 
existence:  it  is  the  personal  life  of  God  our 
Father  in  progressive  expression  and  realization. 
If,  then,  the  momentous  truth  is  that  the  ultimate 
reality  of  all  things  lies  in  the  ^^ei'sonality  of 
God,  it  must  follow  that  only  personality  can 
mediate  personality,  and  the  higher  the  person- 
ality in  time,  the  more  adequate  will  be  the  medi- 
ation of  the  personality  that  is  above  time. 

Ideas  are  mighty  because  they  are  aspects  of 
the  living  truth,  because  they  serve  in  their  way 
to  conduct  the  mind  to  the  recognition  of  the 
vital  fact.  Ideas  would  be  sufficient  if  the  uni- 
verse were  founded  upon  ideas  and  not  upon  the 
living  God;  or  if  man  were  a  being  of  merely 
intellectual  or  contemplative  powers,  and  not  a 
nature  endued  with  profound  sympathies,  and 
one  that  can  rest  neither  in  thought  nor  in  feel- 
ing, but  in  the  self-perfection  that  comes  through 
achievement.  Ideas  are  the  image  of  reality  at 
rest;  thought  and  being  are  one  and  the  same 
only  when  thought   is  at  its  highest,   and  only 


308      CHRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

wlien  being  is  motionless.  It  is  utterly  beyond 
the  power  of  intellect  to  represent  or  conceive 
life.  Between  the  picture  of  Niagara  and  Ni- 
ao^ara  itself  there  is  an  infinite  distance.  We 
need  not  disparage  the  picture ;  we  need  not  dwell 
upon  its  inadequacies;  we  may  hang  it  in  our 
homes,  and  by  its  aid  stand,  whenever  we  will, 
by  the  side  of  the  thundering  cataract.  At  the 
same  time,  we  must  never  overlook  the  fact  that 
the  best  picture  can  furnish  nothing  more  than 
the  most  distant  approach  to  the  reality.  How 
can  that  which  is  forever  at  rest  represent  that 
which  is  forever  in  motion?  How  can  the  life- 
less and  stationary  thing  image  the  boiling  and 
storming  abyss?  There  is  the  same  contradiction 
between  thought  and  reality,  if  we  suppose  that 
thought  gives  us  reality  in  its  living  majesty. 
The  features  of  the  cataract  that  are  in  eternal 
repetition  are  given  in  the  picture :  but  the  end- 
less magnificent  change,  the  actual  torrent  and 
plunge,  and  all  the  sublime  accompaniments  in 
color  and  sound,  cannot  be  transferred  to  plate  or 
canvas.  It  is  the  same  with  ideas  and  the  high- 
est life  of  the  universe.  They  are  wonderful, 
but  the  momentmn  and  thunder  of  being  is  not 
in  them.  They  are  indispensable,  but  they  are 
not  the  highest,  and  they  can  never  be  the  final 
mediation  of  God.  Here  one  sees  the  folly  of 
substituting  a  system  of  theology,  Trinitarian  or 
Unitarian,  for  the  Personal  Life  of  the  universe. 


THE  GIFT  OF  ABSTRACTION.  309 

It  is  giving  the  mother,  not  her  child,  but  some 
distorted  picture  of  it;  it  is  spreading  the  table, 
not  with  apples  of  Eden,  but  with  the  poor  images 
of  them.  What  men  want  to  know  is  the  active, 
enlightening,  rewarding  reality  of  things. 

I  would  not  be  understood  as  doing  other  than 
honor  to  the  magnificent  gift  by  which  man 
reaches  general  views  of  the  world,  by  which  he 
forms  notions,  puts  the  fullness  of  space  and  time 
into  the  categories  of  the  understanding,  and  lays 
intellectual  hold  upon  reality;  nor  would  I  con- 
sent to  be  placed  a,mong  those  who  see  nothing 
but  vanity  in  the  effort  to  compass  .the  complete 
organization  of  thought.  For  all  that,  in  its  own 
place,  I  cherish  the  profoundest  respect.  My 
contention  is,  that  reflective  thought  cannot  pierce 
to  the  secret  of  existence;  that  we  need  another 
guide  if  we  would  look  upon  the  face  of  God; 
that  we  must  seek  another  mediator  if  we  would 
behold  with  the  eye  of  the  spirit,  and  feel  in  the 
centres  of  our  being,  the  reality  of  the  Eternal 
Love.  Man  is  a  moral  being,  one  created  to  be 
a  doer  of  the  will  of  God,  and  not  a  hearer  only; 
and  it  is  only  as  thought  and  sympathy  serve  as 
the  wings  of  the  achieving  spirit  that  they  bring 
us  close  to  the  secret  of  the  universe.  The  boat 
upon  the  river  and  the  intellect  upon  the  great 
current  of  a  strenuous  moral  life  both  come 
home. 
fi         Metaphysicians  tell  us  that  when  we  have  taken 

I) 


310      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

our  common  notions  of  cause  and  substance  and 
relation,  when  we  have  analyzed  the  compound 
of  experience  and  reached  the  pure  conceptions  of 
the  understanding,  the  moulds  into  which  all 
knowable  existence  must  be  run,  we  have  touched 
the  permanent  form  of  reality.  The  human  mind 
and  the  world,  when  they  have  looked  at  each 
other  long  enough,  answer  to  each  other  as  face 
answers  to  face  in  water.  Take  from  the  Infinite 
reality  this  show  under  which  it  appears  in  time 
and  sj)ace,  pierce  backward  to  the  Eternal  under 
this  phenomenal  pageant,  and  then  our  concep- 
tions at  their  best  answer  to,  are  but  the  thought- 
side  of,  the  ultimate  and  everlasting  truth.  This 
style  of  tliinking  I  consider  valid ;  only  I  would 
insist  in  coming  to  the  highest  of  all  the  catego- 
ries, the  form  of  the  personal  soul.  Only  at  this 
point  can  we  reach  the  junction,  the  inseparable 
union  of  thought  and  being.  Cause  and  sub- 
stance, relation,  and  reality,  are  but  the  logical 
forms  under  which  the  ego  is  conceived,  used  as 
moulds  into  which  the  world  melting  into  sensa- 
tion is  to  be  run ;  the  ego  itself  being  at  once  the 
supreme  logical  form  and  the  supreme  reality, 
the  fruitful  source  of  the  whole  scheme  of  notions, 
and  the  concentration  of  all  the  attributes  which 
these  notions  connote  or  rej)resent.  Thus  the 
whole  scheme  of  logical  forms  runs  up  into  that 
of  the  personal  soul,  and  the  supreme  logical 
form,  I  repeat,  is  but  the  reflection  of   the  su- 


PHILOSOPHY,  POETRY,  AND  MORALITY.    311 

preme  personal  reality.  Logic  lands  us  in  per- 
sonality as  its  crown,  and  we  pass  from  the  crown 
to  the  living  head  by  which  it  is  worn.  Person- 
ality, as  the  ultimate  form  of  the  logical  judgment 
and  the  highest  form  of  reality,  stands  out  clear 
and  mighty,  begins  to  construe  the  world  for 
itself,  and  in  its  construction  to  justify  philoso- 
phy and  poetry  and  morality.  Philosophy  finds 
the  ultimate  meaning  of  the  universe  under  the 
notion  of  the  ego;  poetry  looks  through  the 
worlds  of  time  and  sj)ace  as  through  a  sublime 
symbol  to  the  eternal  beauty;  morality,  as  the 
victorious  struggle  of  the  personal  soul  after 
righteousness,  discovers  God  through  life.  We 
need  philosoj)hy  with  its  notion,  and  poetry  with 
its  symbol,  and  morality  with  its  life.  These 
three  great  expressions  of  the  human  sj)irit  must 
ever  remain,  but  the  greatest  of  the  three  is  the 
vital  and  victorious  moral  movement. 

Here  is  the  attraction  of  the  living  world  to 
men  of  genius.  It  is  a  piece  of  reality,  and  not 
a  logical  table  with  mystic  correspondences ;  and 
the  deep  and  sympathetic  study  of  it  leads  through 
life  to  the  Eternal  Life.  We  cannot  blame  a 
Shakespeare,  a  Goethe,  or  a  Tennyson  for  the 
passion  after  the  concrete  that  consumed  them. 
Through  reality,  under  local  and  mutable  forms, 
,  they  were  beholding  reality  Universal  and  Immu- 
table. The  philosopher  at  his  best  is  certainly 
a  king  among  men :  but  then  he  is  so  very  seldom 


312      CHRIST  m  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY, 

at  his  best ;  lie  is  so  very  apt  to  conclude  that  the 
only  path  to  the  truth  is  that  order  of  concep- 
tions, that  table  of  notions,  that  scheme  of  cate- 
gories, over  which  he  has  toiled  so  laboriously; 
he  is  apt  to  place  thought  above  life,  and  count 
an  idea  a  better  mediator  of  the  Eternal  than  a 
man.  The  best  complement  to  the  mind  of  the 
philosopher  is  the  mind  of  the  child.  The  world 
interests  the  child  because  it  is  a  living  world,  and 
that  interest  is  the  mark,  not  of  childhood  alone, 
but  of  humanity.  Life  comes,  not  as  a  vast  scien- 
tific generalization,  but  as  a  superbly  beautiful 
reality,  springing  out  of  the  ground  in  grass  and 
flower,  moving  upon  the  earth  in  a  thousand 
forms  of  strength  and  grace,  breaking  upon  the 
ear  in  all  harmonious  sounds,  filling  the  eye  with 
the  poetry  of  motion,  as  in  the  flight  of  the  bird, 
distributing  and  at  the  same  time  gathering  it- 
self into  permanent  centres  of  power  in  loving 
men  and  women.  The  world  is  alive,  and  its  life 
is  rich  and  capable  of  enriching  our  human  ^ex- 
istence. Science  with  her  generalizations  must 
make  the  domain  of  sense  more  richly  real,  and 
fill  it  with  fresh  charm  for  the  eyes  and  ears 
and  sympathies  of  men.  Similarly,  the  domain 
of  religious  history,  the  realm  of  Christian  fact, 
must  be  handled  in  the  way  that  will  keep  all  its 
freshness  and  humanness.  The  world  wants  ideas, 
but  not  in  the  abstract  and  disembodied  state. 
It  wants  them  in  combination  with  the  chemical, 


LIFE  LEADS  TO  LIFE.  313 

tlie  physical,  the  astronomical,  and  the  biological 
facts  which  they  explain;  it  wants  them  as  they 
show  their  might  in  just  and  courageous  deeds, 
as  they  shine  in  the  forms  of  love,  as  they  storm 
in  the  indignation  of  the  reformer,  as  they  utter 
their  fullness  in  the  richness  and  promise  of 
human  lives  under  the  discipline  of  God.  When 
upon  the  imagination  of  the  Greek  sculptor  the 
ideal  Parthenon  dawned,  he  found  no  rest  until 
the  actual  Parthenon  crowned  the  city's  heights; 
and  to  this  day  the  recovery  of  the  Greek's  vision 
of  beauty  is  inevitably  followed  by  attempts  at 
the  restoration  of  its  incomj)arable  form.  As,  in 
the  case  of  art,  idea  and  form  go  together,  so  it 
is  in  the  realm  of  the  religious  life.  As  it  is  the 
real  soul  that  finds  the  real  world,  so  it  is  the 
living  hunlan  personality  that  reveals  the  living 
God. 

The  inference  at  this  point  must  be  already 
obvious.  If  life  can  alone  lead  to  life,  if  person- 
ality can  alone  reveal  personality,  the  place  of 
Christ  in  the  modern  pulpit  is  plain.  Only  the 
supreme  person  in  time  can  give  us  the  supreme 
Person  above  time.  We  reach  the  living  God 
only  as  we  find  him  mediated  by  the  sons  of  God, 
and  the  leader  of  all  the  sons  of  God  must  take 
his  place  at  the  heart  of  our  faith  and  at  the 
centre  of  our  educational  and  religious  endeavor. 

Another  aspect  of  the  general  philosophical 
vindication  for  the  ascendency  of  Christ  in  the 


814      CHRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

modern  pulpit  is  the  familiar  fact  that  all  the 
moral  and  spiritual  truth  in  the  world  has  been 
born  into  it  through  the  struggles  of  the  human 
soul.  I  have  referred  to  the  fact  that  reality  lies 
in  personality,  that  truth  is  life,  that  this  uni- 
verse is  centred  in  an  Infinite  Person,  and  that 
only  as  mediated  by  persons  can  we  experience 
the  fullness  of  his  wisdom  and  pity.  I  now  call 
attention  to  the  human  side  of  the  subject,  and 
remark  that  the  ideal  forces  in  which  preach- 
ers deal  from  Sunday  to  Sunday  represent  the 
effort,  the  sorrow,  and  the  victory  of  humanity. 
We  often  hear  about  the  history  of  ideas,  but 
for  the  most  part  such  histories  are  colorless  and 
lifeless  things.  Think  of  the  labor,  the  sus- 
pense, and  the  pain  represented  in  the  accepted 
scientific  truth  of  the  world.  To  make  an  ab- 
stract scheme  of  it  is  to  detach  it  from  the  intel- 
lectual travail  of  the  race,  and  to  empty  it  of  its 
charm,  incentive,  and  grandeur.  For  the  pur- 
poses of  thought  and  practical  life,  the  abstrac- 
tion must  be  made ;  but  we  should  come  back  as 
soon  as  possible  to  the  splendid  totality,  the  asso- 
ciation of  scientific  truth  with  scientific  men. 
The  cost  in  toil,  in  pain,  in  blood,  of  the  contri- 
butions to  science  made  by  such  men  as  Coper- 
nicus, Galileo,  Newton,  Harvey,  and  Darwin  it 
would  be  difficult  to  overestimate ;  and  the  mighty 
results  are  thanklessly  accej)ted  unless  at  times 
we  think  of  their  human  value.     Even   in  the 


IDEAL  HISTORY.  315 

case  of  those  truths  that  are  remotest  from  the 
higher  life  of  man,  the  human  element  is  vast 
and  priceless;  and  an  ideal  history  of  science 
woidd  be  a  record,  not  merely  of  discovery,  but 
of  long-suffering  and  victorious  manhood.  The 
effort  and  the  hardship  of  men  of  science  are 
often  quite  as  great  as  those  of  famous  travelers 
and  discoverers.  The  romance  that  surrounds 
the  achievements  of  men  like  Columbus,  Captain 
Cook,  Livingstone,  and  Stanley  should  invest  the 
whole  circle  of  accepted  scientific  truth.  The 
eager,  fevered  pulse  of  humanity  is  in  it  all. 
The  beat  of  the  surging  sea  of  laborious  and  vic- 
torious intellect  is  heard  through  it  all. 

How  much  more  force  there  is  in  this  conten- 
tion when  applied  to  moral  and  sj)iritual  truth 
will  be  obvious  upon  the  slightest  consideration. 
Back  of  the  Republic  of  Plato,  the  Ethics  of 
Aristotle,  the  De  Officiis  of  Cicero,  and  the  moral 
discussions  of  the  Stoics,  there  lie  two  mighty 
civilizations.  Each  of  these  books  is  a  symbol 
of  the  splendid  struggle  and  achievement  of  men, 
a  glass  through  which  we  can  look  into  the  seeth- 
ing soul  of  our  race,  an  eminence  from  which  we 
can  behold  the  battle  with  evil  extending  over  a 
thousand  generations.  It  is  genius  that  inter- 
prets, that  constructs  maxims,  that  forms  codes 
of  law,  that  makes  decalogues ;  but  it  is  humanity 
that  lives.  The  amount  of  suffering  lying  back 
of  the  perception  of  the  principle  upon  which  the 


316      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

story  of  the  choice  of  Hercules  is  based  is  incalcu- 
lable. Think  of  the  dismal  life  of  delusion  pro- 
longed through  a  thousand  years  before  the  first 
intuition  came  that  self-denial  was  sometimes  a 
good ;  tli#ik  of  the  further  suffering  endured  before 
the  intuition  became  a  commonplace  of  morality; 
and  think  again  of  the  struggle  and  tears  necessary 
to  keep  it  a  commonplace  in  the  higher  thought 
of  men!  Behind  that  beautiful  imagination  of 
Orpheus  sailing  past  the  Siren's  isle  in  disdain, 
because  he  was  himself  a  musician  and  was  able 
to  drown  the  seductive  strain  in  a  flood  of  diviner 
melody,  there  lie  the  sorrow  and  the  aspiration 
of  uncounted  millions.  The  richness  of  life  rep- 
resented in  it,  the  defeat  of  evil  under  the  shadow 
of  the  good,  the  fine  ideal  of  human  character 
that  it  holds  forth,  have  back  of  them  the  deepest, 
saddest,  and  noblest  of  all  histories.  If  we  ascend 
from  the  ethical  to  the  spiritual,  the  fact  is  even 
more  obvious.  We  have  our  Christian  monothe- 
ism holding  its  sway  clear  of  superstition  over 
the  devout  modern  mind.  Think  of  the  homage 
to  stock  and  stone,  the  Moloch-worship,  the  poly- 
theism, the  soul-annihilating  pantheisms,  the  per- 
plexity, the  self-immolation,  and  the  despair  that 
led  the  way  to  this  vast  and  beneficent  faith !  As 
the  cloud  settled  upon  Sinai  when  God  appeared 
to  his  servant,  so  upon  the  whole  upward  move- 
ment of  humanity  because  of  the  Divine  Presence 
in  it  there  has  rested  an  immemorial  sorrow.     To 


THE  BIBLE  AND  EXPEBIENCE.  S17 

read  out  of  the  sacred  books  of  China  the  gohlen 
rule  even  in  its  negative  form,  or  to  study  the 
fragments  of  exalted  truth  in  the  religious  litera- 
ture of  India,  without  a  pathetic  sense  of  the 
silent  centuries  of  suffering  represented*  in  these 
achievements,  is  stupid  and  brutish  in  the  last 
degree. 

When  in  the  course  of  this  revelation  of  God 
through  humanity  we  come  to  the  main  stream, 
the  discovery  of  God  made  through  the  Hebrew 
race,  we  still  find  that  the  light  breaks  in  through 
the  struggle  of  the  human  heart.  The  great  pro- 
phet of  the  exile,  speaking  of  his  people,  says, 
"Thy  God  is  thy  glory,"  and,  we  may  add,  "thy 
sorrow."  Who  can  tell  what  ps^^chical  labor 
preceded  the  conception  of  Jehovah  reached  by 
Moses,  and  the  enlargement  and  elevation  of  that 
conception  in  the  mind  of  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Job, 
and  the  later  psalmists!  The  literature  created 
by  these  men  is  a  monument  to  the  method  of 
God  in  his  self -disclosure  to  men.  It  is  through 
the  silence  of  banishment,  the  vision  that  over- 
whelms the  heart  with  awe  and  fear,  the  duty 
that  makes  the  soul  stagger  with  its  weight,  the 
suffering  that  drinks  up  the  life  of  the  spirit,  the 
struggles  that  issue  in  triumph  only  as  the 
strength  seems  almost  gone.  To  employ  the  ideas 
of  the  Hebrew  race  without  a  constant  reference 
to  the  souls  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  is  to  keep 
ourselves  and  our  people  out  of  the  divine  trag- 


818      CHRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

edy  of  life.  The  same  is  true  of  tlie  New  Testa- 
ment.  The  ideas  that  Paul  brings  are  borne  in 
upon  a  sea  of  fire.  The  tides  of  his  own  life  — 
toiling,  rejoicing,  sorrowing  —  float  them  to  our 
door.  What  is  the  meaning  of  Gethsemane  but 
as  a  picture  of  the  cost  of  righteousness?  what 
is  the  significance  of  Calvary  but  as  an  eternal 
reminder  that  the  nature  of  God  as  love  is  real- 
ized, only  through  the  love  that  stands  ready  to 
suffer  unto  death?  The  whole  method  of  ethical 
achievement  and  spiritual  manifestation  has  its 
symbol  in  the  first  Israelite's  wrestle  with  God. 
Through  the  long  night  the  struggle  goes  on,  and, 
although  man  prevails  with  God,  the  morning 
finds  him  bruised  and  lame,  and  he  bears  upon 
his  life  to  its  close  the  marks  of  the  Lord.  To 
enthrone  Christ  in  the  23ulpit  is  to  associate  moral 
and  religious  truth  with  the  august  personalism 
through  which  it  has  come  into  the  world. 

I  have  tried  in  this  chapter  to  assign  reasons 
for  my  claim  that  the  mission  of  the  preacher  of 
to-day  is  to  preach  Christ.  I  have  referred  to 
the  wholesome  intellectual  habit  of  the  time,  the 
association  of  great  ideas  with  their  original  his- 
toric expression ;  I  have  dwelt  upon  the  fact  that 
the  evolution  of  mankind  can  be  accounted  for 
only  through  the  ascendency  of  kingly  men;  I 
have  called  attention  to  the  further  fact  that  the 
true  method  of  education  works  through  the  dom- 
ination of   the   inferior   mind   by  the  superior; 


SUMMABT.  319 

finally,  I  have  contended  that,  since  the  centre  of 
the  universe  is  the  Personal  God,  only  soul  can 
mediate  soul.  And  these  four  contentions  all  point 
to  the  one  great  conclusion:  Christianity  and 
Christ  must  be  in  inseparable  association,  both 
in  the  cast  of  our  thought  and  in  the  form  of  our 
teaching;  the  source  of  the  whole  progress  of  our 
Western  world  in  the  things  of  the  spirit  can 
be  found  only  in  Christ;  the  hope  of  the  world 
lies  in  the  promise  of  the  complete  captivity  of 
the  mind  of  mankind  to  the  mind  of  Christ; 
and,  once  more,  the  sole  sufficient  mediator  of 
the  Infinite  Personal  Love  is  the  e:race  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

The  introduction  of  God  to  the  human  mind, 
the  exposure  of  man  to  the  Infinite  goodness,  — 
that  is  the  great  business  of  all  preaching.  Ideas 
are  our  approaches,  our  instruments ;  but  person- 
ality full  of  ideal  forces  is  our  power.  The  ulti- 
mate Personality  must  be  the  ultimate  and  resist- 
less power.  The  force  that  is  to  change  feeling, 
set  higher  standards  in  the  conscience,  recon- 
struct character,  remove  moral  infirmity,  wipe 
out  the  shame  of  existence,  and  inform  life  with 
a  boundless  significance  and  hope,  must  be  the 
force  of  the  Eternal  Spirit  working  upon  the 
human.  To  lift  the  mind  to  the  height  of  this 
idea  of  the  universe  as  gathered  into  one  Abso- 
lute Person,  to  habituate  the  understanding  to 
this  momentous  truth,  to  make  it  aware  that  the 


320      CHBIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

presence  that  perpetually  overshadows  it  is  the 
j)reseiice  of  the  Infinite,  to  open  the  gates  of  life 
that  the  King  of  glory  may  enter,  is  the  only  sure 
way  to  make  fast  the  soul  to  righteousness,  to 
hasten  its  growth  in  all  noble  powers,  to  put  it 
where  the  ultimate  educational  might  of  the  world 
can  evermore  play  upon  it.  Here  is  the  sorrowful 
thing  about  agnosticism  and  atheism.  They  are 
terrible  mistakes  and  at  the  same  time  they  are 
self-imposed  calamities.  No  serious  man  would 
go  that  way  were  he  not  thrown  into  despair. 
Perhaps  single  individuals  and  society  at  large 
need,  owing  to  the  general  and  brutish  wicked- 
ness, the  discipline  of  agnosticism  and  atheism. 
None  the  less  must  we  deplore  the  mood  as  the 
greatest  of  all  calamities.  There  is  an  education 
that  comes  to  the  soul  from  vital  faith  in  God, 
and  a  power  for  good  upon  society  that  abstract 
right  cannot  give,  that  an  atheistic  or  agnostic 
morality  set  upon  the  very  pinnacle  of  altruism 
is  utterly  unable  to  supply.  The  lives  that  kindle 
the  transforming  aspirations  and  hopes  of  man- 
kind are  those  upon  whom  the  fire  of  heaven  has 
descended;  and  the  characters  that  are  the  fra- 
grance of  history  have  been  perfumed  at  the  altar 
of  the  Most  High.  I  can  think  of  nothing  so 
calamitous  as  human  life  organized  upon  the 
atheistic,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  upon  the 
commercial  idea,  and  the  consequent  loss  of  all 
the  exalting  and  sweetening  power  that  comes  in 


THE  SUPREME  GOOD.  321 

upon  society  tlirougli  faith  in  the  Maker,  and 
Judge,  and  Father  of  mankind.  It  is  forever 
true  that  God  does  not  abandon  man  when  man 
abandons  God;  but  a  race  under  the  delusion  of 
practical  atheism,  with  the  living  God  unrecog- 
nized and  standing  outside  the  circle  of  its  inter- 
ests, a  humanity  under  the  horrible  dream  that  it 
has  no  Father  in  heaven,  can  never  be  a  conquer- 
ing humanity.  On  the  other  hand,  I  can  im- 
agine nothing  better  or  sublimer  for  man  than 
profound  and  vital  surrender  to  the  Personality 
that  rules  all  worlds,  than  the  education  that 
comes  through  the  habitual  sense  of  God,  than 
the  impulse  toward  social  good,  and  the  desire 
and  power  to  bless  other  lives,  that  must  issue 
where  the  spirit  stands  in  the  clear  and  reverent 
consciousness  of  the  Infinite  truth  and  grace. 
The  moral  personality  of  God  is  the  resource  of 
our  race  in  its  sin,  and  ignorance,  and  weakness, 
and  sorrow;  when  it  looks  toward  that  it  begins 
to  hope,  when  it  builds  upon  that  it  begins  to 
achieve  and  live.  The  question  of  all  questions, 
I  repeat,  must  ever  concern  the  larger  introduc- 
tion of  God  to  mankind,  the  resting  and  renew- 
ing^ of  mankind  in  the  love  of  the  Eternal. 
Philosophy  and  history  come  to  our  aid  here. 
Philosophy  proves  that  the  moral  power  of  God 
can  be  mediated  only  through  the  living  person- 
ality of  man,  and  history  declares  that  the  per- 
sonality of  the  Divine  Man  is  the  sovereign  and 


322      CHRIST  IN   THE  PULPIT  OF  TO-DAY. 

indispensable  manifestation  of  God  to  the  world. 
If  the  modern  pulpit  wishes  to  bring  men '  to 
God,  it  must  first  of  all  bring  them  to  Christ ; 
for  the  widest  outlook  over  the  records  of  human- 
ity's long  and  sad  struggle,  and  the  deepest  in- 
sight, join  in  support  of  the  assertion  that  there 
is  none  other  name  given  among  men  under 
heaven  whereby  the  educational  power  of  the 
Infinite  is  brought,  in  boundless  measure  and 
resistless  form,  to  bear  upon  the  whole  human 
character.  On  the  holy  hill  of  Zion  the  wor- 
shiper under  the  ancient  faith  found  Jehovah; 
in  the  sacred  elevation  of  the  personality  of 
Christ  the  worshiper  to-day  finds  his  Father  in 
heaven;  and  upon  this  mountain  of  the  Lord  the 
modern  pulpit,  if  it  is  to  retain  its  power  over 
the  hearts  of  men,  must  forever  stand.  True 
historical  insight  must  ever  bow  before  Christ; 
genuine  philoso23hic  talent  will  always  acknow- 
ledge the  Eternal  in  him;  and,  above  all,  preach- 
ing genius,  wherever  it  is  found,  on  to  the  end 
of  time,  will  live  and  rejoice  in  the  Lord.  Since 
his  advent,  there  has  never  been  a  really  great 
preacher  who  did  not  build  upon  him;  and  the 
preachers  of  the  future  who  will  move  mightily 
uj)on  the  conscience  and  aspiration  of  men  will 
move  upon  them  in  the  forms  of  his  everlasting 
power. 


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History  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  of  the  New  Testament. 

Probably  the  fullest  and  best  work  on  this  subject.  By  Eduard 
W.  E.  Reuss.     Translated  by  E.  L.  Houghton.     2  vols.  Svo, 

$5.00. 

Neandef^s  Chicrch  History. 

General  History  of  the  Christian  Religion  and  Church.  Trans- 
lated by  Rev.  Joseph  Torrey.  With  a  very  full  index.  6  vols. 
Svo,  $20.00. 

Dr.  S chaff  pronounced  Neander  the  greatest  church  historian  of 
the  nineteenth  centuiy. 

Into  His  Marvellous  Light. 

Studies  in  Life  and  Belief.  By  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall, 
D.  D.,  of  Brooklyn.     $1.50. 

The  London  Christian  World  pronounces  these  discourses 
"  most  inspiring,"  and  the  Christian  Iittelligencer  finds  "  a  rare 
keenness  of  insight,  a  reflection  of  taste  that  is  special,  a  spirit 
that  is  most  Christian  pervading  the  whole  book." 

The  Divinity  of  yesiis  Christ. 

By  the  Editors  of  the  Andover  Review.  A  series  of  noteworthy 
papers  contributed  to  that  Review,  and  forming  a  symmetrical 
and  very  interesting  treatment  of  the  great  topic  they  discuss. 
i6mo,  $1.00. 

*#*  For  sale  by  all  Booksellers.     Sent,  post-^aid,  on  receipt  of  price  by  the 
Publishers, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Cornpany, 

4  Park  Street,  Boston  ;   11  East  ijth  Street^  New  York. 


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Serviceable^  Timely^  and  HelpftiL 

The  Evolution  of  Christianity. 

The  remarkable  Lectures  at  the  Lowell  Institute,  in  1892,  by 
Dr.  Lyman  Abbott.  Thoroughly  revised,  and  forming  a  book 
which  the  Christian  Register  says,  "  for  the  breadth  of  its  sym- 
pathies, for  the  generosity  of  its  inclusions,  for  the  largeness  of  its 
spiritual  apprehensions,  can  hardly  be  too  highly  praised."  ^1.25. 

The  World  to  Come. 

A  book  of  vigorous,  very  readable  discourses  by  Dr.  William 
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(^1.25). 

On  the  Threshold. 

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(j^i.oo) ;  '■'Freedom  of  Faith  "  and  "  The  Appeal  to  Life^''  two 
books  of  broad,  noble,  readable  sermons  (^1.50  each),  and  "■Lamps 
and  Paths, ^^  a. volume  of  exceedingly  sensible  and  attractive  ser- 
mons to  children  (gi.oo). 

Who  Wrote  the  Bible  2 

Dr.  Gladden's  frank,  scholarly,  yet  popular  book,  treating  wisely 
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mirable discourses  on  "  The  Lord's  Prayer''^  (|i.oo),  and  "Ap- 
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of  social  questions  (31.25). 

The  Lily  Ainong  Thorns. 

A  very  interesting  book  on  the  Biblical  drama  called  The  Song  of 
Songs.     By  Wm.  Elliot  Griffis,  D.  D.    ^1.25. 

An  American  Missionary  in  jfapan. 

A  book  of  great  interest,  and  giving  a  great  deal  of  information 
about  the  social  and  religious  development  of  Modern  Japan.  By 
Rev.  Dr.  M.  L.  Gordon,  for  twenty  years  an  able  and  devoted 
missionary  in  that  country.     $1.25. 

The  Republic  of  God. 

By  Elisha  Mulford,  LL.  D.  ^2.00.  "  A  unique  work,  and 
devotes  to  the  great  topics  of  theology  a  kind  of  thinking  of  which 
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As  It  Is  In  Heaven.      The   Unseen  Friend.      At  the 
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Three  books  by  Lucy  Larcom,  —  religious,  cheerful,  delightful 
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a  book  of  exquisite  religious  lyrics.     Eacii,  ^i.oo. 

*:)!=*  For  sale  by  all  Booksellers.    Sent,  post-paid,  07i  receipt  of  price  by  the 
Publishers, 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Compa^ty, 

4  Park  Street,  Boston  ;    11  East  lyth  Street,  New  York. 


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